iNternet: A Tale of Unspeakable Cruelty and Terror
by nedthejanitor
Summary: When you stare long enough into the abyss, it stares back at you. The iCarly gang only thought they were up to date on Internet culture, but one day they experienced the true horrors of the cyber world they thought loved them. Now everything is falling apart.
1. iGoats

Disclaimer: idon't own iCarly, but iOwn you. Many times over.

REVISED AS OF JUNE 28, 2013

Endless rain pummeled the concrete roof of the Shays' apartment building on that unforgettable, unforgivable night. It seemed fitting. One of those few nights in a person's life where fate was determined that things would change for the worse. While outside strays hunted shelter and lights flickered, a world was unveiled beyond the comprehension of three young minds. It was the night they truly discovered what lurked in the laughing abyss that was the Internet.

The Internet. God help us all.

"Five, four, three, two…" Freddie counted down before giving the signal that they were on the air. The show was starting, a special show that they had planned out for literally days in advance.

"I'm Carly!"

"I'm Sam!"

They chorused their words together as the logo flashed up on the screen of their viewers' monitors: "And this is iCarly!"

"Now tonight is going to be a _very _special show!" Sam said to the camera.

"How special, Sam?" Carly asked facetiously, knowing the answer full well.

"More special than the kid with the helmet in our math class who eats his own pimples!" Sam said, much to the feigned disgust of Carly. "Tonight, you, the viewers, will have an opportunity to chat with us for the whole hour via live chat. We have the chat room that is normally next to the viewing screen up on the monitor you see behind us!"

Sam turned pointing with her thumb at the monitor, which indeed was displaying a chat room full of iCarly watchers. Carly took over to finish the rest of Sam's piece. "You can suggest new skits we can do, ask us questions, recommend us some cool websites or just give us feedback on what stuff you like and dislike about our show!"

"Yeah… except for the 'dislike' part." Sam added, giving a joking dirty look to the camera. After a brief awkward silence, Carly spoke up. "Let's have a look at the chat room!"

Carly and Sam took a few steps over to the monitor displaying the chat room and got the show started. For the first ten minutes, things went smoothly. A few dumbass questions pertaining to Carly and/or Sam's respective love lives were tossed out there for consideration. There were skit ideas that were outwardly considered but secretly designated as stupid between the three, with few exceptions. Occasionally someone said something mean and rude to get Sam all worked up. Then a user named Poolcloser69 suggested just one word: "goatse."

"Hey, Poolcloser," Sam began, cutting off 69 since she was the only one in the room who knew the number's double meaning, "what are you talking about?"

Poolcloser responded three seconds later, "goatse dot bz" Sam looked confused until Carly jumped in to save her. "Oh, he's recommending us a website! You're the first one to do that today for some reason, Mr. 69!" Sam rolled her eyes at her friend's poor knowledge of sexual lingo.

"I wonder what the website's about." the blonde girl mused. "Must be goats or something."

Freddie announced, "I'll pull it up right now in another tab. Goatse dot bz, right?"

"Yeah," Poolcloser typed.

"That's a strange url. Normally they end with dot com or dot org or something-"

"How about 'dot shut up and type?'" Sam snapped. Not one of her most clever comebacks.

"Okay, okay, typing it in."

Carly, Sam and Freddie gathered around the laptop across the room as the picture loaded. At first, they could do nothing more except gape (heh heh) in horror as they gazed into the horrible website. It featured a man's anus stretched to proportions large enough to fit several baseballs. Their eyes became glazed over for a brief moment; shock was setting in.

Freddie gathered enough strength in him to press the little red X button in the corner. It closed out the window but left an imprint forever in their minds. Carly turned over to the camera. She was obviously disturbed.

"We'll… we'll be right back. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of Spencer playing Ring Toss with the peg glued to the ceiling." The video began playing as the feed was cut, much to the chagrin of the people in the chat room. Or, a few of them at least. A few others were entertained by the ring toss.

"We… we can't take website requests anymore," Freddie said, trying to ignore what felt like earthworms burrowing around in his veins. Up until just a few seconds, the boy had no idea something so disgusting could exist.

"No, we promised," Sam protested. "I mean, yeah, that was gross, but it can't hurt us to check at least a few more!"

"My mom checks my web history pretty much weekly, Sam! If she sees this on it she'll never let me near a computer again, if she even lives through seeing… THAT in the first place!"

"_Oh, my God, I am so sick of your fucking mom and her-"_

Carly was fed up. Despite the shock of hearing her friend curse like that, her nerves were wracked like never before. She wasn't in the mood for their arguing. _"Enough! _Both of you need to calm down!"

Freddie sighed. "What do you think, Carly? Should we keep taking website recommendations?"

"Yes," Carly said without thought. "If one comes up that looks bad or comes from that pool guy, we won't take it. We'll just pretend we didn't see it. But we've promised our viewers for the past week that we would do this, and I don't want to stop just because of one person trying to spoil everything."

"Yeah, there's a lot of really gross stuff on the internet that people spread around as jokes," Sam muttered, almost to herself. "Up until just a few minutes ago, I thought I'd seen it all…"

"I'm putting us back on air," Freddie said. "Five, four, three, two…"

"We're back, iCarly fans." Carly said in an uncharacteristically shaky, under-confident voice.

Sam, a little shaken but strong enough to keep her cool in a way her friends couldn't, addressed the audience. "We haven't been paying attention to the chat since we went off, so if you have another question, comment or request, go ahead and repeat it… NOW!"

The chat room's first website recommendation after the break came immediately after Sam got finished speaking. It was from a user named mudkipsftw. It read: "lemonparty."

TO BE CONTINUED…


	2. iOffend

Disclaimer: I have a dream that one day my children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by whether or not they own iCarly. Which they don't, and neither do I.

A sharp crashing noise followed by a girly scream shook the walls of the Shays' apartment. Sculptor Spencer Shay, halfway through putting finishing touches on a new sculpture (a giant fork made of smaller forks), tripped and fell. He caused the sculpture to fall on top of him. Unprepared for the possibility of being pinned under a giant fork, his only resort was to scream "HELP!" repeatedly. iCarly was forty-five minutes over by then; it wouldn't be a fun fifteen minutes being scraped by hundreds of forks.

By the end of those minutes, Spencer's voice was nearly gone from all the shouting. At long last, the three teenagers comprising the iCarly gang made their way back downstairs.

"Hey," Spencer chuckled after wincing in pain from being poked in the neck, "could you guys give me a hand? I'm stuck."

"What… Spencer?" Carly asked.

"I'm stuck under a _giant fork!_" yelled Spencer back. "I need a hand! Or six!"

Silence. Footsteps coming closer. Spencer could see Sam's shoes in his peripheral vision inching over to him.

"Hey, Sam," said Spencer, "you'll probably need Freddie and Carly's help before you can- ow! _OW!"_

Sam pulled the screaming Spencer out, slowly and agonizingly, from under the giant fork. The back of the older man's shirt was torn up and little scratch marks were littered across his back. Some were deep enough to bleed out a little. Finally, Spencer pulled his legs loose and stood up, looking down at Sam.

"Thanks for the help," Spencer growled, rubbing his back. "Owww- hey…" Spencer got a good look at Sam's face as she looked back up at him. He'd never seen her like that before. In fact, hers was a look he'd never quite seen on anyone before in his nearly 30 years of life. It was a kind of surreal blankness, as if a person with a lobotomy had somehow learned to think again. It was just a little pale. Not so much to be noticeable from a distance, but enough to trigger a message that something was really off.

"Sam?" Spencer waved his hand in front of her face. "Hey, kid, are you feeling okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Sam finally responded. Spencer gave a sigh of relief. "I guess you guys must be tired after doing iCarly tonight. Carly-" Spencer turned around to notice that Carly and Freddie were sitting on the couch with the same despondent faces.

Spencer sat on the edge of the couch next to Carly. "Did something happen to you guys in the studio tonight?" Carly looked over at Spencer and smiled. "No. Like you said, we're just tired. That's all."

"Well, why don't you run up to bed, okay?" Spencer patted his little sister's shoulder before looking over at Freddie. "You and Sam look like you need some sleep, too." Freddie nodded, lifting himself from the couch and walking toward the door. "What happened, anyway? Did you three have a random dancing skit that went on too long?"

"No," Freddie said blankly on his way out. "Good night, Spencer, Carly." Sam followed suit.

"Wait," Spencer began after a brief moment, "Carly, did Freddie get his laptop?"

"I guess not," Carly said dully after thinking about it. "I should go to my room. I'm going to my room."

"Uh… okay," Spencer deadpanned after his sister as she climbed the stairs, "good night!" The door shutting was her response.

He sat on the couch staring at his reflection in the TV. His back hurt a little, but that didn't matter. He couldn't shake this eerie thought in the back of his head that something really bad happened tonight. He had been in the sidelines the whole time Carly and her friends started doing that web show. His sister had nearly gotten into a real fight with a professional female MMA fighter. He'd heard of them being locked up by that psycho Nora girl. Hell, he'd seen them almost fall several stories out of a window washer's platform and get over that relatively quickly. All three of them must have done something really bad in that studio. He felt like he should go check, but maybe he was just being paranoid.

Sam's face… all their faces… No, no he wasn't. Something unusual happened. He slowly got off the couch and walked to the third floor.

All of the lights were still on, though the monitors had been turned off. Spencer noted that there wasn't anything out of place, so that probably ruled out them breaking anything. He looked closely at Freddie's laptop. There was nothing noticeably wrong with it. The screen was blank, but the lights around the keyboard were on.

"I'll take this over to his house tomorrow," Spencer said aloud to himself. "I guess I'm just imagining things. Maybe getting crushed by that sculpture screwed up my brain." As soon as he thought about his back, there was a spot on it that, he realized, was itching. He rubbed it a little bit, but it got worse.

"Stubborn fucking…" Spencer growled, placing his hand on the platform where Freddie's laptop sat. As he finished scratching himself, he turned and happened to notice the laptop's screen had turned back on.

Encyclopedia Dramatica. "Offended."

"What the…" Spencer peered down at the screen. It looked like a Wikipedia article, but there were nothing but pictures of… animals?

"Hmm." Spencer shrugged, scrolling down a little ways. There was a cat with some kind of green hat on, couple pictures of a deer and a rabbit. "Must've been 'cute animals' night on iCarly. Why is this page called 'offended?'" Picture of a baby seal and then…

Wait… what?

"What the hell?" Spencer blurted. Three horrid pictures suddenly greeted him. Three of the most disgusting, mockingly graphic things that he never thought could possibly exist. He laid a hand over his mouth. His mind wanted to shut the laptop and leave, but the finger on the wheel of Freddie's mouse kept scrolling.

Some of the horrors repeated themselves; others were pictures from what appeared to be the same series. Pictures of… mutilation, grotesque sex acts, later-stage STDs, harlequin babies… shown in the most unrelentingly graphic manner short of video. He kept going. Startled. But insanely, morbidly curious. He saw a hand with fingers that appeared to be sliced up with razors. Finally, a kid, looked like a teenager, just laying on a street with his guts hanging all over his body.

Spencer closed the laptop and ran out of the room, barely making it out the door before vomiting everywhere. There was no way he could have held it in before rushing downstairs to a bathroom. Hell, even if he had just run into a bathroom, he couldn't stop himself. By the time he was finished, the clothes he was wearing were completely ruined, covered in chunky vomit and bile. He gasped for air, clutching his oozing mouth with both hands. Tears stung his eyes, not from sadness but from all of the burning in his throat.

He leaned against the wall next to the studio door and slowly slid down into a sitting position. What was he going to do now? Should he ignore this? No, definitely not. But, what would be the right course of action? It seemed like a bad idea to go punishing them or anything. It's not as if they outright looked for it or anything. "They must have found it by accident. Yeah, that's it. Because they were shocked by it, I could see they were." Pause. He thought of grabbing the laptop and taking it to Ms. Benson.

"I think she'd freak out," Spencer muttered to himself. "But I don't know what else to do. They could be traumatized or something…" His eyes darted to the side, his head following. The glass door with the iCarly logo stood right next to him, looking way more innocent than this situation deserved.

The sculptor stood on his feet and clapped his hands together decisively. "Okay, I'll take the laptop over to Freddie's tomorrow and talk to him personally." He walked into the room and shut off all the lights. "They're all probably just a little freaked out and need to be talked through it. I hope."

Spencer went downstairs and sat the laptop on the coffee table, but then he heard a very low moan from the kitchen area. It was croaky and strange, startling the man with its odd tonality.

"Must be Carly…" whispered Spencer, craning his neck. It was Carly. She was bent over the sink, clutching her head in her hands. "Hey, Carly," he began softly, "I want to talk to you." Another moan. She didn't hear him say that, nor did she hear him walk over. "Kid?" He stood by her in the low light and, seeing she didn't notice him, laid his hand onto hers.

Moist. He looked down. Redness. Blood.

TO BE CONTINUED…


	3. iBleed

Disclaimer: iCarly belongs to some other guy I don't know.

The next day. squeaking footsteps made their way along the freshly mopped floors at Ridgeway High. But three students were standing still, in a semi-circle around a locker close to the front entrance. The iCarly team looked no better for wear than they did the night before. A good night sleep only served to ingrain the memories even deeper.

"You had a nosebleed for _two hours?_" Freddie asked. Sam stood a little to the side, observing, with an unusually serious look on her face.

Carly nodded, eyes planted firmly on her shoes. "Not _just _a two-hour nosebleed. It was just… it was leaking out almost like a faucet. I thought I was going to die. For a few minutes, I _felt _like I was."

Sam stepped closer to her friend. "Do you think it has something to do with-"

"Yeah," Carly said quickly before Sam could finish her sentence. "I don't know how, but I think all of that… 'information,'" Carly used air quotes for the last word, "just got to me. It hurt my brain, I guess."

For the next thirty seconds, they were silent until the first bell rang. They had never felt so awkward being in a group together. Everyone, including Carly and friends, left for their individual classes.

()()()

Period two. Carly sat towards the front next to an empty chair while the health teacher droned on and on about nutrition. She remembered a few years ago, when she was a freshman and her science class had a day teaching STDs. Just these horrible pictures of… god damn it!

She could not- _could not- _stop thinking about last night. _Fuck._

Rubbing her achy head, she turned for what was probably the tenth time since class started to look at Freddie. He'd eschewed his seat next to Carly to sit next to that weird kid from hers and Sam's math class. She wasn't really sure how to feel about that; angry, jealous, slightly weirded out? The only thing worse than feeling one emotion was feeling three and having no idea which one was right. Even worse, this happened to be the day after a very traumatic night.

The other kids in school that also watched iCarly had been pestering the three of them all day. They were asking a bunch of questions about what happened that caused the webcast to go off air so much. As much as Carly hated being rude, she had to tell a few of them to buzz off. The last thing she was willing to do at a time like this was relive the events of last night.

()()()

"_Guys, we can't keep taking these suggestions!" Carly exclaimed after recovering from the shock of looking at a threesome between old men. "I feel like I'm going to puke!"_

"_What is wrong with these people, anyway?" muttered Freddie to himself. _

"_Oh, come on, you two!" Sam blurted out, giving both of her friends a scare after the long, awkward silence. "Let's get the show back on the air and just do a few more websites!"_

"_What?" Freddie exclaimed, stunned that, after all of the stone-cold horrible shit they'd just seen, she wanted to continue. "I'm going to catch a virus on my laptop if I keep looking this gross stuff up for these guys!"_

"_So?" _

"_He has a point, Sam," Carly chimed in. "We need his laptop to do iCarly." _

_Sam groaned, and the room fell silent for a few seconds as everyone in room had their own inner debate. _

"_One more website," Sam spoke up. "If one more disgusting website shows up, we'll stop."_

_The next suggested was a page on Encyclopedia Dramatica._

()()()

What was he saying to that kid, anyway?

It was near the end of class and Freddie was whispering something into the pimply kid's ear. Carly couldn't make out words- mostly because she was trying not to look obvious to Freddie that she was listening. The other kid just sat there and, finally, nodded his head.

When the bell rang, Carly tried to get to Freddie before he left, but he was out in a flash. Like he just vanished.

()()()

Lunch period. Carly and Sam met at Carly's car and waited for Freddie so they could all go off campus for lunch.

"It's been ten minutes," Sam growled in the same tone that her stomach did, "where the hell is that nerd, anyway?"

"I think he might be mad at me. Or us."

"Why would he be mad at you?"

"I don't know. He sat next to Jake in our health class today."

Sam's eyes widened. "But that kid freaks him out! Why would he go sit next to him?"

"I know! Much less talk to him!"

"What?" laughed Sam. "He must be trying to give that kid hygiene tips or something. Like, 'step one: don't eat your own pimples until after you brush your teeth at night.'"

Carly and Sam had a giggle, but when Freddie didn't show after another ten minutes, neither of them were laughing. He wouldn't respond to either of their texts. As time went on, Sam became more and more willing than she usually was to just leave the guy behind. Or, at least, she was willing on the surface.

Sam once had a crush on Freddie, and she considered him a close friend regardless of whether she acknowledged it. For the three years the group had done iCarly, it became harder to hate someone she saw nearly every day. They knew each other too well, been through too much together, for Sam or Freddie to harbor any genuine resentment.

That's why Sam was, in a rare showing of selflessness, mildly concerned about Freddie. The girl didn't have to hear what Carly had told her to know that something was very odd about him. Something unsettling, something very wrong; it was as if he had become cold rather than his usual geek self.

This morning, she had put around ten or so minnows in his locker. Half of them she had hung from the top, the other half she had just stuck all over the inside. It was like a prank from a few years ago where she stuck an enormous fish into the locker. It was for old time's sake and some revenge for being so desperate to stop the show the night before.

She didn't understand why it affected them both so bad. Well, she DID, but only in the same way someone "understands" what a person with PTSD is going through. Frustrating as the situation was, it had given Sam a little burst of nostalgic irritation at her nerdy cohort. She had that old feeling of annoyance from when Freddie would whine about his shirt being cut up or something. He really was growing up lately, and certainly growing out of his mother's shadow. By extension, he was drifting away from the old humorous way he went about from day to day.

Anything that reminded Sam of old times- more carefree days where real life wasn't looming over the horizon- was welcome.

When he opened that locker, everything was different from what Sam expected. His eyebrows rose slightly and his mouth did curl a little bit. But then he looked over at where she was standing across the hallway and, smirking, pulled out his books. Shutting the door and walking past Sam, all he said was "good one." He wasn't even close to tantruming or at least expressing displeasure like any sane person would have done. There was no bile or sarcasm in his voice; it had taken on a mono-tonal quality.

Maybe he was just tired. That's what she tried to convince herself.

Finally, the two decided to walk into the cafeteria and maybe eat something there. They added "maybe," of course, because the school's food ranged from "borderline tolerable" and "less edible than human feces." When they got there, they looked at food and decided that it fell to the latter half of that spectrum. They opted for two cartons of milk and some seats next to a window.

Sam peered across the room and noticed something else peculiar. "Hey, Carly, look," she pointed toward the desk where all of the nerdier kids sat. Usually, that was where Jake from math class sat. In fact, that was _always_ where he sat. But not today.

"Do you think maybe Freddie decided to go get lunch with him today?" Carly asked.

"That's it!" Sam declared. "That chiz-head ditched us to go eat pimples with that fucking kid!"

Carly nodded slowly, but her face betrayed some uncertainty. Unless Freddie was absolutely furious like never before at both of them, it seems unlikely that he'd just ditch them. Freddie was a lot of things, but he'd never really been immature. Or all that passive-aggressive… but then, who knows? It didn't seem like there was any other logical explanation that didn't involve him being seriously injured or something.

"Hey, don't worry," Sam said, "he'll be at home after school and we'll kick his ass then."

"Yeah…"

()()()

It was seventh period computer class and Carly sat in the back doing some project with a Wheaties box cover. The room was quiet with little whispers and occasional shuffling of paper, making this Carly's favorite class for the moment. Being able to think and not have to listen to a teacher or work on a paper was great. It was an opportunity to reason things out.

She'd decided that she was acting way too paranoid about this whole thing. Freddie was bound to have a perfectly reasonable explanation for what he was up to in health class. As for the horrors the three of them had to subject themselves to last night… time would heal those wounds. And leave no scars.

She thought about writing that one down for a song or something.

Thirty minutes elapsed, and Carly discreetly left the project to surf the Internet, like most kids in the class. One could get away with it, as long as they made it look like they were researching for their project. "Come to think of it," Carly thought to herself, "this pretty much is my favorite class." After all, it took place at just the right time, near the end of the school day. It was refreshing after a long series of boring classes to be able to relax and do something more creative. For the first time that day, the intensity that had the teenager's mind in its grasp was gone.

But it came back in the form of a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey Carly," Principal Franklin said quietly, "can I see you for a second?"

Carly, going from relieved that it wasn't the teacher to worried, looked up and nodded.

()()()

Carly's anxiety was made no less slight when they walked together into Principal Franklin's office. The atmosphere of the room was clearly trying hard to be friendly and relaxed. But the pervasive dark brown of the place somehow felt inorganic and distant.

The principal sat down at his desk and forced a very brief smile toward Carly. He could tell she wasn't feeling too well. That was too bad, but he was definitely too far in the same boat to help her with that. "Don't worry, you aren't in trouble," he began warmly, his calm voice contrasting with his face, which had never looked so deathly serious before. "But there's something really important I need to have a talk with you about."

"'K-Kay."

"Have a seat."

Carly sat down in the chair that was clear across the room, staring expectantly at Franklin.

"I don't know if you were already aware of this or not, but your friend, Freddie Benson, has been involved in a serious altercation with another student-"

"Jake?"

The principal nodded. "Jake Malloy. So, I guess you already knew. Well-"

"I- I didn't know… they were in a fight."

"Okay. Regardless, what I called you in here for is to ask you some questions. But, first, I think you need to know the seriousness of this assault."

He sat up in his chair a little bit, clearing his throat and trying to find the right way to tell Carly what had happened. "I'm going to be frank about this, because I think you deserve to hear what your friend… seems to have turned into. We found the two of them in the men's bathroom during lunch period, Freddie was inside a stall and had pinned Jake against the door. He was screaming so loudly that kids several yards down the hall could hear it. We… we aren't sure why, but Freddie seemed to be trying to tear the other boy's face off."

Carly shuddered involuntarily; a numb feeling of falling invaded her gut at that very moment.

"And he nearly succeeded, from the looks of things. Jake had bleeding wounds all over his face; Freddie himself had Jake's blood smeared all over him. All over his mouth and chin. It… could arguably be because Freddie was trying to… eat the kid's face."

"Why?" Carly exclaimed, far louder than she had really intended, before standing up and practically launching herself towards the desk. "Why would he do that? HOW could he do that? That doesn't make any sense! It couldn't have been him!"

"I'm afraid it was, Carly. As to why he did it, that was what I called you in here to ask you. Is there anything at all that could have triggered this… completely off-the-wall behavior?"

Carly slowly backed away. A part of her inside was saying that it couldn't have been the incident last night. But… she couldn't think of a damn thing else that could have acted as such a sudden catalyst.

"Y-Yeah… I think."

TO BE CONTINUED…


	4. iVisit

**Disclaimer: .enim ton si ylraCi**

Carly's walked back to her apartment so deeply immersed in thought that her other senses had mostly shut off. She ended up tripping over something twice and accidentally walking smack into a tree. Everything around her felt as if it had stopped. It was no longer vibrant, but just some painting she had been inserted into.

She tried. She tried and tried and tried. But she could not- perhaps _would not_- understand how Freddie Benson launched an attack like that. This was a kid who once tried everything he could to avoid a fight with GIBBY of all people! With or without the gross website excuse, it simply didn't make any sense. Maybe all those conservative anti-violence protesters were right; maybe certain forms of media did directly cause violent tendencies in others.

But then, why did it happen to Freddie out of all people? Hell, if anyone, Sam should have taken the fall. That's not to say that ANYONE should have or that she would rather it have happened to Sam than Freddie. It just would have made more sense for Sam to do something like that. Then again, Sam was a little more stable than Freddie in a few regards… particularly in dealing with stress. Sam would take her problems head on, in a frenzied sort of way, while Freddie would oftentimes break down.

Carly stopped in front of Freddie's door. She had a feeling he wasn't going to be there, but maybe his mom was. Marissa, of course, probably already knew what happened at the school. Not so sure she wanted to talk to her right now, but feeling obligated, she knocked on the door and patiently stood there. After a few seconds with no answer, she opened the unlocked door.

The smell of various cleaning chemicals invaded Carly's nose, making her cough. The apartment had a sickly, clinical air to it. It was like a hospital. No one really seemed to understand how pathological Marissa's need for cleanliness was.

"Ms. Benson?" Carly called out. She stood at the door and waited. No answer. "Must be at the school with Freddie, talking with a counselor or something…" She shut the door and turned to walk into her own apartment.

"Spencer, I'm home!" Carly dropped her backpack on the couch and listened for Spencer's footsteps coming downstairs to greet her.

"Huh. Is he here?" Carly asked herself after taking a look into Spencer's room, which wasn't a very good idea most of the time. But Carly only looked long enough to note that Spencer wasn't in there. She shrugged. "Must be at the grocery store."

()()()

Spencer stood up from the couch in the waiting room of the hospital. A doctor was walking toward him, clutching a clipboard in his hand. He was very old to be still practicing. "How's Ms. Benson?"

"Not too well, I'm afraid to say. She's delirious," the doctor sat down where Spencer was sitting. "Possible concussion, but she also seems to be showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. From what I'm not sure."

"That's really weird... I don't know what could have happened to her."

The doctor pursed his lips. A myriad of possibilities ran through his mind. "Could be that she fell over and hit her head on something. You say you found her lying in the kitchen?"

"Yeah, and blood was pooled around her head. A really big puddle. I couldn't believe-"

"Don't upset yourself by dwelling on it, young man." The doctor thought for a little while. "You know, the paramedics said that they found her cell phone on the ground close to her."

()()()

The studio was a good place to be alone, even more so than Carly's own room. There was an atmosphere of comfort, but mixed with solitude that allowed anyone's mind a little more room to reflect.

Carly had already texted Sam with the odd news, and she was coming over later. She had also texted Freddie, asking him to talk as soon as he could. The problem was that she had no idea how to approach this situation. Was she just supposed to ask him, "Hey, why did you try to eat some kid's face?" Well, Sam would probably do that, if she hasn't already.

"Hey, Carly." Carly, previously lost in thought, jumped a little in the beanbag chair she was sitting in. She was not expecting Sam to have shown up so soon. "Did you get-"

"Yeah, I did," Sam said. "We should start looking for a replacement tech guy."

"What?" Carly blurted out, walking over to face Sam. "If any of this is true, something's really wrong with him, and all you care about is-"

"You didn't hear about his mom?" asked Sam. Carly's eyes widened for the second time that day. "Did he… no, he couldn't have…"

"He may have. They don't know." Sam stated. "I skipped my last two periods to go over to your house and hang out and Spencer was all flipping out. He found Ms. Benson lying on the floor bleeding from her head."

Carly sat back down in the beanbag chair, took a deep breath and started to tear up. "What's going on…?"

Sam wasn't sure what to say herself. Being torn between all sorts of emotions- fear, morbid curiosity and anger- wasn't something she was used to.

"Carly, we should go meet your brother at the hospital."

()()()

Freddie entered the waiting room of the hospital and walked over to a lady working behind a counter. "What room is Marissa Benson in?"

"Room 115."

"Thanks."

Ten minutes passed while Freddie made slow progress to his mother's hospital room in the sterile halls he was navigating. Every time he heard beeping or groans of pain, he slowed his pacing down a little involuntarily.

Ever since this afternoon, he had grown paranoid… he didn't feel like himself, and he wasn't acting like himself. He was frightened, his head was foggy and full of thoughts that he never once had before… all of his senses were going crazy. For the last 12 or so hours, since last night's internet live stream… it was hard to explain.

Spencer looked up from his feet to see Freddie enter the room. He smiled weakly, making no effort to conceal his deep pity for the young man. "Hey."

"…Hey. How is she?"

"She's been unconscious for a few hours, but they don't think she's in a coma. I'm real sorry about this-"

"Do you know what happened to her?"

"She slipped and hit her head on the kitchen counter, from the looks of it."

Freddie sat down next to Spencer on the bench-like surface under the large window. "When did you find her?"

"About one o' clock, one fifteen. Why?"

Freddie turned around a little bit where he sat. Spencer noted how uncomfortable the boy looked, but he brushed it off as concern for his mother. "At school today, I was involved in something pretty bad. They called my mom at one o'five, and I know that because that's when the bell for 7th period rings."

()()()

Carly and Sam took a cab and made it up to the hospital where Sam said Ms. Benson was staying. After moments waiting behind a guy getting surgery to remove a pencil from his ear, Sam spoke to the receptionist. "Do you know what room a kid named Jake is staying in?"

"Sam!" Carly whined, turning her friend around to face her. "We are here to see Ms. Benson!"

"I want to see what Freddie did to that kid. You know, just to get an idea of how bad all this is."

"Jake Malloy?" the receptionist asked. Sam nodded. "Room 140."

After finding Ms. Benson's room number, the two split up. Since Jake was the one who got attacked, if someone talked to him, maybe they could clear this up better. That was the way Sam saw it. But she was going to have a hard time pretending to buddy up to that kid.

()()()

"136… 138… here we are, 140." Sam stopped in front of the door. But before she could enter, a middle-aged couple walked out of the room with gravely angry looks on their faces. The woman stopped when she noticed Sam and tried her best fake smile. Ineffective, to say the least. "Are you here to see my son?"

"Uh… yeah." Sam wasn't sure whether to lie or not in this instance. "I heard about what happened at school today and-"

Jake's father, a short, stocky and thick man in oil-stained overalls, growled gutturally. "My son watches that iCarly shit all the time, I recognize you."

"Uh, okay-"

"You know who else I recognize? That fucking kid in your videos that attacked my boy. If I ever find that little bastard, I swear I'm going to beat him to shit."

Sam's own temper got the best of her. Despite her tumultuous association with Freddie Benson, she considered him a friend. Besides, who did this guy think he was, the cops? She got up close to the older, taller man. "Not unless you go through me first."

Jake's father snorted and walked away, leaving Sam and Jake's mother behind. Before turning to walk down the hallway leading to the cafeteria, he turned his head to look at Sam. He whispered just loudly enough for Sam to hear but quietly enough for the busy staff to not pick up. "If you dare try to get between me and that punk… I guaran-goddamn-tee you that a bullet's going to hurt you a lot more than whatever you can dish out."

He walked away before Sam could issue a witty (read: viciously pissed off) retort. His wife laid a hand on Sam's shoulder. "I'd like to say that he's not always like that, but…" She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. Sam turned around, brushing the woman's hand away. "Look, about Jake and Freddie, I-"

"I don't think you had anything to do with it, dear," the old woman smiled. Sam noticed how red her eyes were and relaxed a little bit.

"I just wanted to talk to Jake a little bit. Up until today I… didn't think Freddie had it in him to do something like this. I was just hoping your son had some answers."

The woman shook her head. "He can't really talk all that well right now… and I think he just needs to rest. You might come back tomorrow."

"Okay. I-"

Loud scuffling sounds could be heard from down the hall, followed by yells and banging sounds. Sam and Jake's mother looked at each other, shocked, before running towards the sounds.

()()()

"Get off that boy this instant!"

The Shay siblings, three nurses and a doctor were trying to pry an angry bull-like man off of Freddie. It was hard to do, and not just because the older man was eager to fight. Freddie himself had taken to clawing and kicking at the man like a mad cat. With Sam's help, they were finally pried apart.

"Let me go! He tried to kill my son!" the old man screamed, blood dripping from a wound on the left side of his face. Freddie, being restrained by Sam and Spencer, leveled his head at the man and then spit at him. The spit connected with the gentleman's face, spurning him into launching a vicious struggle against the four people restraining him.

Ultimately, and with great embarrassment on the part of Jake's mother, the man was hauled out of the hospital altogether.

Sam finally let Freddie go after the man was out of the building. "Spencer, what the hell was that about?"

"I don't know! This old crazy guy just attacked Freddie!"

"Freddie!" Spencer screamed, but Freddie had already started running down the hall after the man who just attacked him. Sam and Spencer gave chase, easily catching the much weaker boy. A hospital aide walked over to the group as they struggled with their seemingly rabid friend. "Look, you four are going to have to leave the premises. This isn't a place for you to horseplay around."

Sam stood up, pausing to make sure that Spencer had a good hold on Freddie, and turned to the nurse. "If you want to kick just Freddie out, that's fine, but all we've been trying to do is restrain the guy!"

"Fine. But if you three make even one more even slight disturbance, you're out of here."

()()()

Sam and Spencer stayed in Ms. Benson's room for another two hours, trying to make sense of all the madness. "Have you ever seen Freddie act like that? Or even try to act like that?"

Sam shook her head. "No way. I didn't think he had it in him to spit on some guy and freak out like he did. Or try to rip some kid's face off."

"I thought so too, but-"

"Spencer… did he tell you about what happened on iCarly last night?"

Spencer paused, remembering the horrible things he found on Freddie's computer… the nosebleed… "Shit, I forgot! Carly's been in the bathroom for like fifteen minutes. Could you go check on her?"

Sam stared at Spencer, looking for irony in his face, and laughed uproariously when she deduced he wasn't kidding. "Check on her in the bathroom? You're being a little over-protective, don't you think?"

"Sam, she had a very bad nosebleed last night," Spencer stated firmly. "I just want you to go in there and make sure she isn't having another one. Just say that you had to go too. We all need to be in here, anyway, because I wanted to talk to you all about Freddie's laptop."

"Yeah, I remember Carly telling us about the nosebleed… but, why did she have it?"

"I don't know. She doesn't either."

Sam got up from her seat on the other side of Ms. Benson's hospital bed. "Okay, Spence. I'll be back in a second to make sure the toilet hasn't swallowed your sister." Spencer just clenched his jaw and nodded.

()()()

_Some things people were not meant to see… _

_This was a room that had no tiles, a room that could go on forever _

_but stopped so short it drove you mad, which for you was worse or better_

_paradise, then and there, lost, a silent scream, a creeping hope_

_for anyone, anywhere, anything to help you cope_

_when everything becomes so ugly that you start to seek your home_

_in a place as cold and distant as real life, your mouth will foam_

_your face will age beyond repair, a fruit too rotten to stay solid_

_thrust into witness for the fact that everything breathing is squalid_

_pulsing to a freight train rhythm, crying like a long lost child_

_because what stood so tall before has lent itself to be defiled._

_Don't try to rest your aching head, don't try to speak against the wind_

_it slices deep as wayward glass or questions like "where have you been?"_

_that's just what months and years are for, the answers to that very riddle_

_are slabs of concrete in the end, helping you to chase the middle_

_to be continued_


	5. iStumble

**Disclaimer: There is no one in the world better at not owning iCarly than moi.**

White knuckles that, for the past ten minutes, were glued a fatigued bathroom sink… that was all she felt. Her dark eyes scoured the pool of blood, soap and water congealing in the sink. Like they were looking deep within this… _scene, _for the proverbial pinch to wake her up from this fucking nightmare. Even then, all was quiet on the front.

Blood. Always red. Always called red. But what about black or brown? Against a white t-shirt, blood was not scarlet like the sin of adultery. It was no longer the graceful, if nauseating, indicator of suffering. It wasn't a fine wine. It was a copper shit-smear. There was nothing whatsoever dignified about it. Wiping it away was as good as ensuring that one's fingers would stay filthy. The fingers would be ridden beyond recognition with these unkempt, unwashed, little cells. They made little homes in the little inroads of your fingerprints, free-loading, awaiting the inevitable flood of soap bubbles.

The magic words. "Oh my God, Carly!" The magic words that yanked her into cruel, delirious fatigue. They came tightly wound together with the voice of someone so familiar. Someone to think about. But not now. The back of her head had an appointment with a set of dirty tiles. C'est la vie…

()()()

_5 days later…_

"Hey, do you want to get anything to eat on the way back?"

The taxi steadily- apathetically- wheeled across town to the Shays' apartment building.

"No. I'm okay."

Herself and Ms. Benson had gotten out of the hospital only a few hours apart from each other. The day was beautiful, and Carly understood why. Because it actually wasn't, compared to the best days of weather she had seen in Seattle. But it wasn't a hospital room. It didn't have walls painted blinding white, it didn't have that dread feeling of mortality and displacement. The long, rain touched patch of grass between the curb and the sidewalk greeted Carly's feet upon her exit from the back of the yellow car. She breathed in. Home!

"You better go in. Lewb's been missing you."

Carly let out a small chuckle. She'd forgotten all about old Lewbert. "I think I'm even going to be glad to see-"

"_**YEEEAAAARRRRRRGGHHH!"**_

"…Maybe not."

She stood there dimly observing that, yes, there was a door that lead to the lobby of her apartment building. Not being sure what the big deal was with small details lately, she snapped to reality when Spencer brushed past.

"Spencer, what's-"

A classic Lewbert eruption as soon as Spencer pulled the door open. "**I DON'T KNOW!" **

Spencer entered the scene, with Carly close behind. Ms. Benson, whose head was decorated with a white gauze helmet, had Lewbert in a wart-hold and was interrogating him. "Freddie is nowhere in this building! A good door-man would have seen him leave!"

Lewbert flinched. Freddie's mom had punctuated "good" with a slightly harder grip on the wart. "Who said anything about me being a **good **door-man?"

"No one!" Ms. Benson let go and turned to leave. "No one I've ever talked to!"

Lewbert cupped a hand over the sore side of his face. "**GEEZ!**"

Carly stepped up to the front desk. "Were you telling the truth…?"

"**OF COURSE I WAS!**" Lewbert roared. "WHY WOULD I NOT BE?"

"He has a point…" Spencer said from behind her.

Carly shook her head. "That was so crazy. I've never seen Ms. Benson flip out like that!"

"**I HAVE!**" Lewbert pointed at his wart. "**SEE?**"

"We know, we know…" Spencer stepped in front of his sister, as if to take control of the situation. "Look, was Ms. Benson like that when she first came in?"

"**GET ME SOME GLUE FOR MY FACE AND I MIGHT LET YOU KNOW!**"

"You're over-reacting…" Spencer said quietly, then in a whisper. "Also, I used up all my glue making Carly a surprise sculpture to welcome her home with."

"I was just in a **WART-LOCK!" **Lewbert turned to walk into the back room.** "**I don't want to answer your stupid questions right now."

()()()

"SAM!"

"Whoa!"

Sam had been lying on the Shays' couch waiting for Carly to arrive, when Ms. Benson burst through the door. Ms. Benson strode urgently to Sam's side, kneeling down.

"Where is Fredward?"

"Uh…"

"Where is my son?"

Sam sat up. "I haven't seen him."

Ms. Benson wouldn't be gotten rid of so easily, much to the chagrin of her interrogatee. "Since when?"

"Uh… about two days ago, when he got kicked out of the hospital." Sam paused. "You realize he's going crazy, right?"

Ms. Benson jolted up with startling speed and, screaming, slapped Sam across the face. Sam's mind went blank with disbelief and she gazed dumbly at the older woman.

"_I don't believe you!_" Ms. Benson railed. "Boys don't just go around trying to kill each other! Ever since you and that... _girlfriend _of his started hanging around him, he hasn't acted right!"

Sam, whose teeth were clenched harder than her eyes could burn, stood up and backed Ms. Benson toward the door. "We didn't do _anything _to him… _you did!_"

Ms. Benson's voice broke with fear and outrage. "Did what? Raise him right, which your mother didn't do with you?"

Sam backed off, if only because there was still a remaining vestige of reason left in her brain. This was not the time to explain to Ms. Benson exactly what she meant when she said what she said. But she still leveled a squinting, angry expression toward the older woman. "Look- I really don't know where Freddie is. I wish I did. Now go somewhere else to look."

The stand-off went on briefly, tensely and wordlessly before Ms. Benson broke it off, storming away to scour elsewhere. Sam stood still long after Ms. Benson left. After the shock and anger began to clear, curiosity took their place. Where WAS Freddie? It was, after all, the day his mom was getting out of the hospital. He knew it was. Wouldn't he be at home waiting for her, especially if he was as neurotic as she was…?

"Probably just at the Groovy Smoothie or something…" Sam scoffed, slipping on her still-tied tennis shoes. "I'll go look for him there…"

()()()

_30 minutes later…_

Carly and Spencer stood in the doorway of a small, shabby room. It was the room where Freddie lived for a few days the first time he ran away from his mom. A crummy-looking little den-like area that would embarrass a family of hillbillies caught calling it a home. That was _before _Lewbert decided to make it a storage room for the odd things he found in vacated apartments.

And there Freddie was. Sitting in the middle of the dirty floor with his laptop balanced poorly on his folded legs.

"I'm staying in here again… for a little while."

Spencer sat down on the floor next to Freddie. Carly stood off to the side, staring at Freddie's laptop. To her relief, it had nothing horrible on it, just some Wikipedia article for someone named… Albert Fish?

"Why don't you want to go back home?" Spencer asked, not even noticing Freddie's computer's current display. "Your mom hasn't seen you in a couple of days since…"

"The incident." Freddie nodded, briefly glancing toward Spencer with his distant eyes. "You don't need to worry. I don't want to talk…"

"Come on, maaan! Go see your mom for a little while, then we can go fencing or something."

He was silent.

"Well, if you don't go to her, we'll bring her to you." Spencer said slowly, taking in the kid's shift in personality the best he could, though with a lot of difficulty. "She's been looking all over for you. She's really freaking out."

Carly smiled. "She even put Lewbert in a wart-lock when he didn't know where you were."

Freddie gave a faint chuckle, but didn't turn his head away from his laptop screen. Spencer and Carly leaned in to look at it, seeing that it was now displaying his browser history. Carly assumed he didn't want to look like some kind of whacko. What he didn't realize is that he already did.

"Are you doing some cleaning?" Carly asked her friend jokingly. "Getting rid of a few things you don't want us to see?"

Spencer looked up. "Yeah, you kinda need to… I saw what was on there."

Carly and Freddie both turned to look at Spencer, eyes wide. In the first place, Carly had almost forgotten the atrocious things she saw that night… but now her _brother_ went and looked at it? Spencer couldn't watch a Friday the 13th movie without leaving lights on the same night, never mind… the Offended page.

"Wh… when did you look at my laptop?" Freddie asked tensely.

"The night you guys left it in the filming room." Spencer said back.

To think, he had trusted that no one else besides those three had looked at it. He didn't even suspect anything whenever Carly and Spencer first found him and Spencer volunteered to fetch it for him. He knew right where it was, too… Freddie abruptly closed his laptop, placed it off to the side and stood. "Just… Never mind. I'll clean it out later."

"Clean what out?"

The eyes of Marissa Benson met the eyes of the other three people in the room one at a time. Shocked expressions dominated the wordless conversation 3-1. Pervading was the kind of tension one could make a rope out of and hang their selves with. Freddie was the first to speak.

"H-Hey, mom."

"Fredward!" Ms. Benson's face broke into tears and she grabbed her son's arms. Carly and Spencer flinched, knowing she'd just got out of the hospital. She definitely did not need to be as worked up as she was right now.

"What happened to you?"

Carly and Spencer stood by the doorway, ready to leave but still surveying the moment. "Nothing. Really…"

"I thought I taught you better than to get into fights at school! Never mind that, you went and _picked one! _Do I need to start home-schooling you again?"

Freddie backed away and shook his head. "No, you don't, mom."

Ms. Benson began to inspect Freddie for any signs of a fight. "You could have been seriously injured!" Pause. "…Were you? You aren't hurt, are you?"

"No-"

The mother's sharp, inhaling gasp trailed her discovery of an inconsequential cut under her son's right arm. "Well, if you aren't hurt, then what is this?"

He was silent. Spencer motioned to his sister that they should leave. But a protest in the form of stillness retaliated from Carly's feet. She stared at Freddie from across the gray floor, doing an inspection of her own. All the familiar signs of irritation, exasperation, minor embarrassment, were as absent as Carly had been from school for the past few days. Freddie just looked at his own mother as if she were some distant, overbearing relative.

"Come on home with me, I'm going to get the first aid kit out and disinfect that-"

Freddie yanked his arm away and backed off a couple of inches.

_Is there anybody in there…?_

"I don't want to go back home…"

Carly and Spencer leaned in closer, but remained in the doorway, ready to leave. They were treated to a grunt of frustration.

"Not this again! Fredward Benson, you come with me this instant so we can get this wound fixed up!"

Freddie stood his ground, but his face was like an ironing board and his voice sounded like mid-air. It reminded one of his whole Twi-vampire shtick that got him the attention of the ladies. Only, rather than charming, it was creepy. "If you want to fix the cut I got two days ago, go get the first aid kit and bring it down here."

"Freddie!" Carly blurted before she could stop herself. Again, Ms. Benson groaned at not just her son's stubbornness, but his little girlfriend still sticking her nose in.

"Freddie, I was just released from the hospital. Please don't make this difficult on me."

"I don't want to go up there. I want to be alone. Please get out."

Carly was reminded, yet again, of the first time this happened. Freddie was triumphantly insistent upon his independence then, despite his mother's shrieks of contrary. But there he had been holding his head up high, staring his mother down and being in control. He seemed here like a recluse who saw others like a normal person would see cockroaches crawling up their arm.

"Ms. Benson, I'm going to go get the first-aid kit," Spencer said finally. He knew it was ridiculous, doing that for a small cut, but he didn't want to frazzle Ms. Benson now. "You should just take it easy here, okay?"

Ms. Benson thought for a second, turned to Freddie to see if he'd changed his mind, then nodded at Spencer. On cue, he made haste toward the Bensons' apartment. Carly found herself impressed that Spencer had yet to do or say something really stupid in the last few minutes. She supposed that, when the situation called for it, Spencer could be decent at responsibility. Yet, her want of everything to return to normal shadowed her feelings of newfound respect. Carly wanted the old Spencer back- hell, she wanted the old _everybody_ back.

"Freddie," Carly said as she turned around to find that he hadn't moved an inch from where he had been standing, "you know you can't just live down here! Be realistic!"

"Exactly! You can't- wait, what?" Ms. Benson turned to look at Carly. "You… you agree?"

Carly gave an awkward look. "Well, yeah. I don't want my friend to live down here any more than you do..."

"Well…" Ms. Benson glanced again over at Freddie before moving towards Carly and proceeding to talk to her quietly, conspiratorially. "Do you have an idea what to do?"

"I can't really force him to come back," Carly said hesitantly, "maybe we should just wait for him to get sick of living down here."

"What?" Freddie's mom snapped in a voice loud enough for Freddie to hear (but not respond). "He could catch a disease living in this wreck!"

Carly sighed. "Unless we drag him, I don't think he'll go, Ms. Benson."

"I can hear, you know…" Freddie dead-panned, appearing to be talking to his shoes. Ms. Benson turned to face her son with intentions of yelling at him. But she could only clench her head the way that a massive headache had suddenly clenched her brain. She stumbled down to her knees.

"Mom!" Freddie gasped. Carly had already run to her side- knelt, really, since she was already inches away- and Freddie did the same.

"What's wrong?" Freddie tilted his mother's head up to face him. Her face was twisted in agony, every muscle tightened around her skull. Incapable of expressing a coherent thought, she let out a wail and tried to stand.

"Don't get up, Ms. Benson!" Carly ordered her. "I'll get some aspirin, okay? Freddie, you stay with her!"

"Okay, hurry!" Freddie said excitedly. The girl had a confused look on her face that the other two couldn't see. Freddie seemed to be acting completely ordinary now, given the situation. But, then again, his mom was having some kind of attack. She would have thought him a complete monster to be anything other than scared and concerned.

She looked again at his face, and noted that it didn't match his words. That stark calmness was unwelcome, that blankness of expression was beginning to define who she almost came to love. All of his cold, all of his violence…

Who was Freddie Benson…?

()()()

"You got it?"

"Yeah. Let's hurry."

Spencer was racing to the Bensons' apartment when he ran into Sam, holding a smoothie and looking stumped. After explaining the situation, Sam agreed to slap some sense back into Freddie. She was unsure why, but nonetheless quite willing to butt in one more time.

"So, his mom slapped you?" Spencer asked in the middle of power-walking down yet another flight of stairs.

Sam followed close behind. "Yeah! She just jumped up and smacked me!"

"That doesn't sound right. Are you sure she didn't just trip or something?"

"No! I swear, she just up and hit me as hard as she could! I think she's out of her fucking head."

Spencer scoffed. "She's worried about her son and she just got out of the hospital. I think anyone would be a little loco in her situation."

The conversation braked upon Carly's entrance onto the staircase, with frantic intensity, tripping over her own feet.

"Carly, what's going on?"

"Sam, it's Ms. Benson, she-"

"Wants to apologize?"

Carly face-faulted. "No… why would she apologize?"

Spencer made a waving-away motion with his un-first aid kit-holding hand. "Don't worry about it, what's wrong with Ms. Benson?"

()()()

The white flag was being sewn and prepared for her. The fist that was to raise it squeezed an achy head dry of anything other than agony. She felt like a tomato turned into gory paste. Everything was getting cold, and her son's hands were more and more like fire each second. Movement transformed from convenience to dread because when she tried, every response was only a shaking along the chosen limb. Was the world black and white? Had it always been? Was it just the tombstone of a room she was in that provided the illusion of hopelessness? Did it matter? The cherry rain that fell from her cloudy head was about to end. Limp.

()()()

_Some things people were not meant to see…_

_When you look at a mirror, do you see the same person your reflection is staring back at? Do you see what you want to see or what you need to see? You know those beautiful things you brag about? Those eyes? Nothing but damp balls that transmit an ugly world into the brain. Your poor brain. It's protected by skull, but the things that can really hurt it are being forced upon it every time you turn your face in the wrong direction. Look again. The next time you reach for your reflection and it reaches back at you, remember this: you're yearning so, so, so, so much more than it is._


	6. iFall

**Disclaimer: iDon't own iCarly. (Have I made that joke yet?)**

_Four months later…_

It was an overcast Thursday morning in April and the alarm clock struck seven, soon interrupted by a pale hand. Then it found itself adjusting to the light of the overzealous lamp just above it.

Carly sighed and laid back down on her bed. If she were the skipping type, she'd never go to school. She'd had no sleep since about 5:18 am. Why she'd remembered that specific time didn't cross her mind. Why she'd been so sick with inability to cool down did. Seems like lately her legs would start kicking or moving or shaking and she wouldn't even notice. Other than that, she felt fine, but just a little… uncentered.

Her nosebleeds had stopped two months ago, around the time things slowed down over at the apartment across from hers. Ms. Benson had recovered pretty much completely and was back to her old OCD self, and Freddie seemed like he'd been okay. Seemed like, in all other places other than the brief flashes she'd get sometimes.

Flashes that spoke silently of a distance between her and Freddie that wasn't completely gone yet. And she couldn't be sure, but Sam was probably in the same place. He still carried on like the haunting memories of their viewer request night were faded, but not gone. There was a chance they'd never be.

She realized after that incident in the basement something changed about Freddie, and it was related to viewer choice night. While Sam and herself were heavily grossed out and depressed for a few days afterwards, they were somewhat over it. It wasn't something they particularly wanted to look back on, but the memories seemed manageable. At least, Carly felt that they were becoming that. She couldn't speak for Sam.

Freddie's brain, on the other hand, was permanently warped by what he saw. Those gruesome images combined with latent minor psychological defects he could thank his mother for to create a small insanity. One that may not ever go away. She feared.

_Ring… ring…_

"Hey, Sam," Carly greeted, little hint of weariness in her sleep-deprived speech. Why in the holy hell was Sam calling this early…?

"Carly, they're playing Claw 3D at the Cinema-Enema this weekend! We're going to go see it tomorrow after school."

Unsure what she cringed at harder between Claw 3D and Sam's loud voice, Carly thought for a handful of seconds. "What are you doing up this early in the morning?"

"I didn't get any sleep," a quiet, new voice said over the phone. "I'll probably take a nap second period. Whaddaya say, Carly?"

"You could have just waited until school before-"

"Come on, what's the big deal?" Sam whined. "I can tell you didn't get any sleep either, I thought, 'why not?''

Carly gave a rather pointless half-smile. A shade of normalcy was starting to bleed into the black bedroom. "Sure, I'll go. I'll just tell Spence we're going to see Toy Tale 4 or something."

"You know, you are 18 years old, Carly, you don't really have to tell Spencer anything."

Carly thought about that for a second and ignored Sam's scoffing tone. Had that even occurred to her lately? Was she really an adult now? "He gets worried. You know how he got when we tried to see that wrestling show that one time. If I tell him the truth, he'll just spaz out."

"I can't believe someone who invents hammer-wheels and sets things on fire so much could be over-protective."

"Yeah…" Sam and Carly drifted off the conversation at the same time, neither of them being aware about the other one. The brunette's fingertips nibbled at her head, as if digging to the brain to excavate something to say.

"I'll ask Freddie if he wants to go with us to see the movie-"

"I already have," Sam said quickly. "I called him just before I called you. He said 'yeah,' then hung up. What an asshole. Can you believe that?"

Carly chuckled softly. Truthfully, she could. "Well, you DID call him just before his alarm probably went off," reminded Carly. "I may have done that too if I had actually been sleeping."

"That's not really the problem, though," began her friend, before once again falling quiet. "He's different."

"I know." She said almost immediately, and much to her own shock, involuntarily. It sounded so much worse when it was said aloud. But she knew it to be true. Absolutely, he'd changed. "I've noticed it too."

Were they now friends with someone they didn't know anymore? Did they even need to ask, when it was so clear they were?

"So what should we do about it?"

"I don't know if there's anything we can 'do' about it, Sam. If he's changed, it's not like we can 'unchange' him…"

"Sure we can… I mean, there's got to be _something_ we can do."

The girl stood up and began to pace the room, thinking and speaking all at once in a disheveled web of active fear. Fear that Sam was wrong. "I… uh… You mean like talk to him…?"

"Well, yeah." Sam said with a smug "duh" tone no one in the world wanted to hear at seven-thirty in the morning. "Maybe he really wants to tell one of us something, but he can't say it."

"I guess," conceded Carly. "You're right. It's worth a try. But, Sam…" Carly's voice dipped lower, becoming strangely secretive. "I don't want to ruin the whole weekend over it."

"…This isn't something we should put off-"

"Why not?" blurted Carly. Staring at the alarm clock, feeling like she was pushed into a corner, she couldn't stop herself from emptying out. "It's not just him, it's all three of us! We all have a problem with this! Why should we single him out and make this all about him? I can't sleep, I worry every day about having another nosebleed, it feels like I'm talking to a stranger when I talk to you or Freddie, and I don't know anymore if it's my problem or you guys! Stop! Just… just…" Click. Sam hung up before Carly could. Back to hiding, back to the sanctuary.

Carly felt bad the second she put the phone down. For the first time in a while, Sam tried to reach out and Carly puked her own problems out instead. But what did she expect? If everyone's being affected by this thing… shouldn't she take that as carte-blanche to air her own issues? The room seemed to be tipping over, but she realized it wasn't the room. She was falling, feverish, bashing her head against the wooden bedframe, blood running down past her mouth and her shirt.

()()()

For the next thirty minutes, Sam's hands were shaking. They begged to rush back to Sam's cellphone. Slam the numbers in, they said, call her back and dare her to ever speak to you like that again!

But she knew better. It wasn't anything to do with how she said all that- it was only what she'd said. Sam knew damn well how all of this was affecting her friend. But when she heard it in that tarnished voice, it felt new. It felt like she was just now realizing the impact of it. Sam hoped Carly would understand. She couldn't stand to be on that phone another minute.

This was around the time Sam usually went to sleep. But today, she didn't feel it.

()()()

"I hate Seattle."

Carly fiddled absently with her jacket pocket's zipper. It was 3 minutes past 4, freezing, and Freddie was a statue gazing drearily at the theater's "now showing" posters. Carly knew too well Sam's tendency to be late, and it was only 3 minutes, so it was no surprise. That fact didn't make standing around stupidly in the cold any more damned bearable.

Her head hurt. Her head really hurt. It was one of those three-aspirin headaches, throbbing like a fist was gripping her brain. Squeezing it like a stress ball. When she closed her eyes to try soothing it, that exact picture was projected onto her eyelids. It pissed her off. That caused it to hurt worse. Which pissed her off even more. Then it hurt worse…

"Let's just go in and buy our tickets," whined Carly. "This is stupid."

Freddie drifted from one poster to another in a daze. "Sam hasn't gotten here yet."

Carly let loose a mighty (for her) growl of frustration, beginning to pace back and forth for warmth. She started to ponder excuses to get out of seeing the movie, figuring a headache would make her seem whiny. "She'll know we're in here, she knows what movie we're seeing! The movie starts in like ten minutes! All you're doing is staring at those posters, anyway." She paused, adding a joke to try and lighten Freddie's mood. "If you love those posters so much, why don't you marry them?"

"Maybe I will," Freddie deadpanned back.

God… he didn't sound anything except obligated when he said that. Like he felt he had to.

Like talking to her… like being her friend… was a job. As if it were just as much a part of life as smelling sewage.

Before Carly could think, she once again displayed a brashness that she found she could not stop. She grabbed Freddie's shoulder and spun him to face her. Freddie flinched away fiercely, diverting his eyes for a split second. He backed up against the movie poster behind him, staring at Carly with a look unfamiliar to both of them.

"Be honest, Freddie. Is something wrong?" Carly asked determinedly. This was her chance. It was him and her alone. She was going to get him to crack, to admit defeat.

"No."

"I don't believe that, Freddie. Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing's wrong, Carly," Freddie assured, as best he could with no conviction. "I feel fine."

So many anguished, pointed, or self-conciliatory words knocked at the door of her mouth in her brain. All she had to do was let go. Uncertain, beside herself with desolate want, hoping all these deeply wrong things to warp into a miracle, Carly backed off. A tin can rattled down the road in the distance, being rolled into a gutter by a fragile wind.

Both of them were getting used to sounds that pockmarked the city's silence. Seattle was a din of quiet noises neither one had noticed. Trees leaned and bowed to the pressure of wind. Their leaves, defeated, drifted to the ground to die. They never got any dignity- the gutters, sewers and rakes hungered for them, swallowing them. Carly never felt so lonely.

Before Carly could plot her next course of attack, Freddie unglued himself from the wall and stepped toward her.

"Uh… I-I think we should just go in and get our tickets now," Carly rushed to say. Her personal space related to Freddie was becoming very quickly compromised. With little hesitation, he reached towards her face, bringing it closer to his. But at a certain distance, he made no more sudden movements. Trembling under his overly-focused gaze, Carly dug some words out to fill the dead air between them. "Freddie… I've told you so many times I don't-"

"Your nose been bleeding?" Freddie asked suddenly. The sudden change in his voice was enough to give one pause. Carly didn't know whether to feel relieved or even more freaked out.

"Not today, that I know of," she finally answered. "It did yesterday, but it stopped really quickly and I didn't… even tell Spencer." Realizing that, in her daze, she had forgotten to keep that a secret, she pulled away from Freddie. "Don't let Spencer know I went with you and Sam when I had another nosebleed yesterday."

"What did it feel like?" Freddie pursued.

Carly was so dumbfounded, it didn't occur to her they were nearly too late to get into the movie. He wanted to know what it FELT like? Even if she really wanted to, she didn't know any way to answer him.

"What made you ask me that question?"

Freddie shrugged and looked to his left, indicating his own self-awareness at the audacity of the question. "Uh… we need to buy our tickets. Forget the question."

He slinked ahead into the theater against Carly's protest. The young lady at the ticket booth was very attractive, Freddie thought to himself. Like Carly used to look. Long, black hair. Pouty, pink lips. Cute nose. Smart eyes. Carly still had all that. But it was faded with years of staring blankly at it every day. It was a photograph, frayed at the edges, turning sepia toned.

()()()

She stared into space. This thinking stuff was sort of new to her, and she didn't know how to do it well. Not that she was stupid; it was just that she had gotten into the habit of letting things go. But lately she didn't feel right standing by that anymore. Flicking open the butane lighter, she lit another cigarette. Shit. She was becoming just like her mother.

A vague guilt buzzed around her head. The fumes couldn't take care of it. They couldn't even take care of her, but fuck, why not keep going?

Their conversation revealed that she was much like Carly, who was disorganized and very self-doubting when she withdrew. Her confidence in how she felt about things she HAD decided on was the one difference. She was deeply unsettled by Freddie, and how Carly seemed to be on the sidelines over the past few weeks. That's why she decided to leave them alone together at the movies. Perhaps Carly would take the opportunity to talk things through.

Pausing, she glanced at her watch. 6:00. The moment of truth was fastly arriving, and Sam wasn't ready to fastly arrive. She felt way too tired to get in a hurry. It was darkening; the sky was turning the hue of a dark blue comforter. It wouldn't have surprised her a goddamn bit to feel rain drip down on her head. Some days she just wanted to stitch an umbrella to the palm of her left hand. In a place like this, one might as well.

()()()

It hurt to even crane her head back and look at him slowly catching up to her. He was mouthing words to her that she couldn't hear, grasping at the air for her attention. She was only faintly aware that the way they were going was the opposite of where they needed to go. The only thing she was concerned with was putting sizable distance between her and the man behind her.

Never in all of her most vivid dreams would she have given Freddie even HALF the audacity…

"Carly, wait up!"

Turning on a heel, boiling over, she screeched, "WHAT WERE YOU FUCKING THINKING?"

Freddie looked into her eyes, piercing so deep she felt two inches tall. He didn't offer her an answer.

()()()

Rushing for what seemed like the first time in her life, Sam rounded the corner towards the movie theater. She was just in time to see the first of the patrons starting to leave. Amidst all the unfamiliar voices, Sam listened. Amidst all the strange faces, Sam watched carefully for two people that weren't there. Lots of people that kinda looked like them… but no them.

Had they both lied to each other somehow?

()()()

"I don't even want to hear what you have to say, you creep! Just stop following me!"

"I don't want to."

WOOSH! She did a spin reminiscent of a ballerina and brought a severe hand to Freddie's face. His reaction was remarkably visceral, stumbling backwards before dropping hind-first to the sidewalk. Instead of rising, he sat up indian-style, arms draped on his thighs, and glared at Carly with an odd look. Maybe it was her anger. Maybe it was his lack of it. But she could swear she was seeing someone she didn't recognize where Freddie's face used to be.

Anything Carly had to say to Freddie Benson had died between his cheek and her hand. She left the boy there alone. He sat there, teasing the red mark with his fingertips. The flesh of his cheek was soft and hairless. Massaging it gently, he made no attempt to stop the tears approaching his mouth.

()()()

Sam Puckett was someone with the fear of hundreds of high school boys and girls held inside a cheerleader's body. But not tonight; she had a hesitant hand placed on Freddie's back as he wept. Comfort was never Sam's strong point- if Freddie's misery were personified, it'd be much easier just to beat it up.

She hadn't been this scared since she was a very little girl. When she overheard a vicious argument between a dazed, hung-over bear-man and the mother who entertained him the prior evening. The mother who swore vainly, never again. The mother who took Sam's respect and, little by little, dashed it into pieces.

He wouldn't tell her what was wrong, and it didn't take her very long to stop asking. There were two factions at war in her head; fear and relief. Fear that Freddie was broken beyond repair, gone forever from the person he was back when. Back a few months ago… maybe just weeks… the time hasn't been moving normal since then. Fast, sure. Slow, definitely. But normalcy might be a cause lost to them forever.

Yet relief washed back ashore when his sobs became less intense, only to come back as hard as ever. Is this the thing he should have done all along? Release? All it takes for release is some pressure. Could Carly have tapped into the deep, painful reservoir in Freddie? The best thing that ever happened to him could have been going with Carly tonight. She had to talk to her.

()()()

Carly had never felt so violated in her life, even though he hadn't even touched her. She didn't entertain a connection between the movie's violence and Freddie's reaction until she lay in her bed.

The reason it had taken so long, of course, is that it didn't make a shit. Freddie had demeaned her in front of a crowded theater, and the Freddie she once knew wouldn't have done it. At least, she thought. The thought made her sick, but what if Freddie was always that way? What if he had been hiding his real nature? She'd known him for what felt like a decade, and it creeped her out imagining he was always a freak.

Whatever the case, she was done with worrying for him. He's pretty much a grown man. He could handle himself. There was no sense in giving up her life to dedicate her mind at being concerned all the time. She had enough to worry about with her nosebleeds, which amazingly hadn't started after getting so furious at the theater.

After what he had done, there was no way she could see him the same way again. Even if she'd wanted to see him at all. It would be hard, but her sympathy for him would have to go the way of the dinosaurs. The kind of help was far, far beyond what she could offer.

()()()

"It's time to let go."

"It's time to let go."

"It's time to let go."

Like a dripping sink.

"It's time to let go."

Like a ticking clock.

"It's time to let go."

Like a steady rain.

"It's time to let go."

Like a bored backbeat rhythm, Freddie muttered the same five words to his shoes. The crying had stopped. The miserable time Sam was having of trying to comfort him had only begun. His one hand stayed glued over his forehead and the other one dangled uselessly at his side.

"Freddie…" Sam started, until she realized she had nothing to say. She felt like she had to say something, but she didn't know what. She could ask what happened, but she didn't know if Freddie wanted to talk about it. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to talk about it. She didn't know. She didn't know anything. This must be what Carly's been feeling like this whole time.

"Sam, I did something… bad at the theater."

She stopped in her tracks to glare down at Freddie. He was hunched over slightly, his head laying limply down into his hands. It felt like there was no more strength in his neck to lift up his head. Sam's sudden rush of anger had started to boil over.

"Freddie," came her hard voice, "what happened? Did you do something wrong to Carly?"

Freddie opened his mouth to speak, but slowly. Sam wasn't about to get a slow answer.

"Well? What's going on?"

"THAT MOVIE!" Freddie screeched, gripping his head with both hands. "She never, ever should have taken me to see that movie!"

()()()

"_I hate Hollywood movies. They always show breaking in the most hyped-up glorified hen-pecked tasteful fashion, even though it never looks like that. Rock bottom isn't losing a job and cute girlfriend. Rock bottom is draining the water out of your own vomit just so you can carry on for one more worthless day, even though you know deep down it's just going to be a rerun of the same terrible things you experienced for the past month. When your days become reruns, suicide is painless. When your days become attempts to survive, you have no reason to stay alive." _


	7. iBreak

Disclaimer: iHardly own iCarly. And, by hardly, I mean not even remotely.

()()()

Carly's throbbing head opened its eyes the next morning with a strange, uncomfortable feeling in the roof of its mouth. It was indicative of an oncoming flu. Later, it would ooze down to her throat, stripping her of her normal voice, replacing it with congested, raspy nasality. It must have been the weather yesterday.

By that evening, she was bundled under clothes from yesterday, over which was a sheet, over which was a blanket. Any and every part of her body that didn't get covered sufficiently brought a shock of cold to her.

The worst of it was that her nosebleeds had returned, though not as merciless as before. They forced her to lay on her back most of the time. She was gazing at the ceiling, colors bleeding into others, small noises her ears picked up that weren't definable. Everything seemed so out of reach all of a sudden. Everything except the questions in her mind she didn't want to answer.

()()()

"Let me see if I've got this straight…" Sam clasped her hands together, muffling a groan of frustration, "The reason that Carly is mad at you right now… is because she caught you masturbating to Claw 3D in the middle of a crowded theater?"

The room was dimly lit, despite being mid-afternoon, with little evidence of tension piercing through the mundane normalcy. Freddie had a barely-detectable scowl of shame set on his face, as if containing something within that he couldn't defeat.

Sam had called Freddie an hour ago to discuss the problem with him at her house. After refusing to show up, Sam made a point to come over to his house instead to confront him. He's lucky to not be beaten up right now, she thought to herself many times since yesterday evening. She'd come very close to doing just that when he wouldn't give any clear answers to last night's questions.

Finally, after Sam clobbered his door, Freddie gave in and told her the entire story. Carly had left to use the restroom, and when she got back he was jacking off. That pretty much summed it up.

"…I don't even know what to say to that, Fredd-o," Sam said after a long silence. It was hard to tell, but she was trying to stifle a derisive laugh aimed at Freddie. Even though their friendship was less hostile than it was years ago, Sam wasn't above mocking her hapless pal occasionally. But this was something far too serious. If it were any other girl, Sam would have lost her mind laughing, and then slapped some sense into him. But it was Carly, and that was no laughing matter.

All Freddie could do in response was mutter something incomprehensible and shift in his seat ever so slightly. Like a child who knew they were in big trouble. But, again, this was something so much larger than just breaking the neighbor's window. This was indecent exposure. You can only get away with that shit if you're breastfeeding. Freddie was certainly an A cup.

()()()

Spencer had been working on a lot of projects lately. He had a lot on his mind, so he compensated with a massive amount of work to busy himself with. Right now, besides re-working his fork sculpture, he was… well, it's a long story, but it involved hot glue.

"Shit shit SHIT!" he swore to himself under his breath, inaudible because of the ice-cold water he was running on his forearm. "I'm never going to use a hot glue gun again, I swear."

Beneath the ever-vigilant layering of water on his skin, something looked familiar. Spencer didn't want to know what it was. Because the closer he got, the closer he got to reliving something he didn't want to re-live.

It was about to be another first of another month, and Spencer loved those. Ripping that page off the calendar felt like he was leaving awful things behind. But the effect was much less potent when the next month brought the same problems back. Spencer always lived in a sort of fantasy. Even with money always lacking, he never acted like he was in any kind of crisis. Fact was, sculpting brought very, very little in, and mommy and daddy money wasn't an endless reservoir.

When he finished rinsing off and bandaging his hand, Spencer leaned over the couch. There was nothing on the TV. Well, not nothing. But there was no interesting stuff on the screen. Why couldn't he stop thinking about Carly and Freddie?

()()()

"What do you mean, 'you're screwed'?" Freddie asked coldly, leaning forward in his chair. "Are you telling me Carly's never going to talk to me again?"

"Yep," Sam responded simply. "I don't know what you expected, but this is what you get."

Freddie leered, giving Sam a look that would have gotten the shit beaten out of him in other circumstances. Carly was someone who meant more to him than Sam ever cared to understand. All these years putting up with Sam's constant belittling, only to have his future with Carly dictated by HER?

"Why do you look so happy about it?"

"Freddie, I don't look anything about it. I'm just humiliated to be your friend right now."

"The feeling's mutual."

Sam flinched. Freddie's said a lot worse to her before, but she couldn't remember when. How dare he talk to her like that when he's the one who fucked things up?

()()()

_Hey, Carly… hey… Carly! …CARLY!_

Slowly, she opened her eyes. They were dry. They hurt. But at the same time they watered up in sync with Carly's attempt to speak. "Spence… what's up…?" She managed to croak, not feeling quite up to giving him a smile.

He shrugged, mostly to himself. "Eh, just sculpting. You don't really want to hear about it."

In a room with someone so ill, even the slightest noise could send a shudder through the high-strung sibling. Carly pushed herself ever-so-slightly upwards to get a good look at her alarm clock. It was only when she looked at the clock that she realized it didn't matter anyway. With that, she crashed right back down, head against the pillow. He waited for her to breathe again before he spoke.

"Carly, look," Spencer began. Carly might have noticed that he was unable to stop fidgeting, on one of her better days. "I know this isn't a very good time to talk to you about this, but you made a really terrible mistake leaving to go see that movie without telling me you had another nosebleed."

At those last words, Carly's foggy eyes shot open with speed almost like the shutters of a camera. Against Spencer's will, she summoned a few remaining pieces of strength to boost herself into a propped-up position. "Who told you about my nosebleed?"

"I just got through talking to Freddie's mom," Spencer sighed. "She overheard Sam and Freddie talking about it together. I…"

He didn't want to admit he was lost on what to do.

()()()

"Sam… whether you want me to or not, I'm going to keep talking to Carly."

Sam swiftly brought her balled fist down on the table. Nothing- absolutely nothing- she had said to him was getting through. If reason wouldn't work, it would have to step to the side for anger. "I've told you already, you idiot, it isn't YOU that's not going to do any talking, it's HER!"

And just like that, the room became silent for a few brief moments. So quiet, it was like the universe. Slowly, Freddie began taking sharp breaths. Breaths that sounded like the aftermath of a 20-mile marathon. Sam stood up from her chair. She wasn't sure what she was hearing from Freddie, but she wanted to be ready for anything.

But just as quickly as they started, they stopped, and the deafening silence re-appeared. To say that one could hear a pin drop was an understatement. One could damn near hear a person breathing from across the hall.

"How do you know Carly won't talk to me?" Freddie snapped with no warning. "She will! She has to!"

Sam shook her head, "No, Freddie. Don't be dumb about this. You really humiliated her by doing that, and it's your fault for not thinking of that before you took out your… TOOL, in a crowded area."

"SO WHAT?" Freddie screamed. At this point, it was very safe to say that Sam had never heard Freddie get this loud. "I've known her almost as long as you have! It's not fair that one mistake destroys everything! She needs me almost as much as I need her!"

()()()

Putting her pen down for a second, Ms. Benson tried to be quiet as the noise in the kitchen escalated. It sounded like she was about to have to get up. Something she couldn't do very well these days.

She'd been trying hard to take a different role in her son's life besides the doting mom with OCD tendencies. With her injury, she knew all too well that she couldn't handle anything too stressful. All that she could do was justify it to herself, try to believe, "This is how he wants it."

She caught herself at the end of the sentence, not wanting to drown the noise coming from the other room. The screaming between the two was getting louder and louder, and she could hear them mentioning Carly's name.

Carly.

She knew that bitch would be trouble from the moment Freddie came home talking about her. That girl, and the screaming blonde in the kitchen with Freddie; both of them did this to her son. Turned him into some kind of monster. She wasn't keeping track anymore of exactly how long Freddie had changed. But… sometimes she felt like the son she once had was gone.

Suddenly, a piercing shriek and a crash propelled Ms. Benson into the other room.

()()()

"…Did you hear that?" Carly gasped to Spencer. He turned around to look at her, shaking his head.

"It sounded like a crash coming from Freddie's apartment! Go and check!"

"How could you possibly have…?"

Spencer put his hand on Carly's forehead to check her fever. Carly didn't feel it. At that moment- how Carly would never forget this moment!- she was numb to everything happening in the material world. In all of her fever, a little picture show clawed along at a dream-like pace in her head. The edges were faded, but she could see Freddie sprawled out, nose bloodied, on his kitchen floor. Sam standing over him, fist clenched, breaths heaving, face expressing… anger, pain, pity, creating something she didn't recognize. Ms. Benson entered the room…

And then, it went blank, and Carly could hear what Spencer was saying, but barely. He sounded scared, she thought, licking her lips and tasting the copious amount of blood flowing down them again.

"Carly, keep your head back as far as you can! I'm going to- oh God- I'm going to get a napkin!"

()()()

"WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?" wailed Ms. Benson, knelt to the side of Freddie's unconscious body. "What did you do to my son, you witch?"

"Nothing he didn't bring on himself." Sam stated coldly. "He came at me with this knife," and she gestured to the knife on the table where, seconds ago, Sam and Freddie had their last conversation.

Ms. Benson muttered something between sobs of agony that Sam didn't understand, but didn't ask her to repeat. She stood shakily in the boundless forever that the moment had become. No longer caring how it had come to this. No longer wanting to know what it was going to lead to. Belly full of ice, hands grasping at each other for warmth. Again, Ms. Benson muttered something incomprehensible.

After an achingly long pause, Ms. Benson got up with struggle and walked to the table to get a napkin. It was as if, to her, Sam wasn't even there. The blonde herself didn't know how to feel about that.

She wanted to help as Ms. Benson creaked down, caring for her laid-out son, but her limbs ignored her brain.

"M-Ms. Benson, I… I-"

"Get out."

The simple words, spoken so meekly, died in the air fast.

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" came the sudden, deafening screech, inhuman sounding, from Ms. Benson, who appeared poised to struggle to her feet once again. Before she had to, Sam quickly let herself out.

()()()

Spencer had flown downstairs when Sam burst through the door and collapsed in tears on the couch. The sculptor stared, dazed, at this girl releasing her anguish, who appeared so suddenly, as if out of the sky.

"Uhh… can I get you something...?" Spencer asked, half-jokingly.

Sam didn't respond, or maybe she did but it was inaudible.

"Well, look, Carly's really sick, so I'm going to go upstairs-"

"What's wrong?" interrupted Sam as she lifted up her head.

Spencer paused to parse her words spoken through her tears. "She has a cold. I don't know if you should see her or not, you might catch it."

"I really need to talk to her."

Spencer sighed, honestly wanting Sam- and Freddie as well- to just leave Carly alone. The more they'd been seeing each other since that one night, the more it seems to have made Carly hurt. Still, he also knew that they could make her really happy sometimes.

"Look, I'll go ask her if she wants any visitors. Just stay there."

()()()

_I'm dying… I just know it. I'm going to die; I'm never going to get to see everyone again. Spencer, Sam… Freddie… I don't know where you went, but this guy you left in your place isn't good enough… I want you to come back. I didn't think I could miss anything so much. So scared… I'm so scared… I'm seeing more things I shouldn't see, and I don't know what they mean, and I don't know how to get away from them._

_Fucking internet… fucking internet people. They betrayed us. That's just what happened, we had an audience, people who wanted to watch our show, and we thought it was because they loved us. But that can't be true. Not after what they did to you, Freddie… made you disappear, made you not be here with Sam and I to graduate…_

_They hated us all along. They were watching for something they could do to turn us into… one of them. One of the rotten people who sent us those photos… those butchers._

_And the worst of it. The worst of it was that they won. They broke us. I'm dying… Sam's not the same… Freddie's become someone I've never met before, a monster. They beat us._

()()()

Freddie glared at the ceiling and refused to move, and his mother didn't feel like trying to pry him up. She knew he was basically okay, physically. It didn't faze her anymore. She would have been freaking out several months ago at the idea of Freddie even being scratched.

"Freddie, honey…" began Ms. Benson in the middle of an inner monologue that debated the futility of this course of action. "Do you have any broken bones?"

"Why don't you get me a prune pop?"

Ms. Benson forced back a gasp, straight from her gut. Even back when she was more obsessed with her son's overall wellbeing, she knew that he hated those forsaken things. Ms. Benson didn't try to understand it; she knew she wouldn't. She just did as her son asked and watched him eat the thing he would have flushed not long ago.

He slurped it, forcefully, angrily. As immature as it may be to say, it truly appeared that he was sucking a dick. The poker face he held never left him, no matter how crudely he shoved the thing down his throat. Then he began to bite. He would take a bite from the popsicle Ms. Benson knew damn well was still frozen near-solid. Crunching, moving his jaw, allowing small purple-black droplets to escape from his maw.

He finished the popsicle and returned to his room, where he spent all of his time these days. Tears came out of his mother's eyes, but she didn't feel anything.

()()()

_Carly walked into Freddie's apartment one afternoon. He had shed his skin all over the place once more._

"_Freddie?!" Carly shrieked his name. No response. Again, she shrieked. Nothing._

_She had to feed him, but she had to find him first. No problem. Same place he always was. Under his bed. He liked to stare at the wall blankly, even though he had no eyes to do so with._

"_It's lunch time, Freddie," and Carly started cooking. It only took a minute. She grabbed the dirty doggy bowl and vomited into it. When it was nice and full, she pulled Freddie out by the stump of one of his arms. With his head slammed into the bowl by his owner, he started to feast. He slurped like it was a toilet, and he was truly a dog. Sometimes, Freddie Benson was glad he did not have eyes._

()()()

Freddie stepped over piles of cans of Red Bull and used tissues to sit at his dilapidated leather chair. He moaned, letting the air that came out of his mouth be the tip of the iceberg in his chest. He was a shell that once belonged to someone else, but was like that old house on everyone's corner. Tired, lifeless, being eaten alive inside and out, mocking the better years it lived through.

With machine-like movements of his fingers, Freddie accessed his internet and began to peruse through the usual websites. Finding the one he wanted, he scrolled down slowly. He smiled. Something he rarely ever did. Through the coat of sperm on his computer screen, one could make out the shapes of various cruel images. Abuse of all sorts performed on small animals. The sort of website one looks at and loses faith in humanity. For Freddie, it was another night on the town.

Freddie never gave any thought toward what turned this stuff from disgusting to fascinating- and arousing- for him. He never gave much thought to anything, here in his room. Where he could create his own little wannabe paradise, with rivers of waste and fields of decaying, letting everything go. Where he could face himself in the only reflective surface that didn't make him want to break it. Where he could have power. Where he could feel right. Where he wasn't helpless and angry. Where home was.

He took his penis out before closing the tab and going to another one. This was a favorite of his. Coprophilia anime. Even when he would finish relieving himself to it, he would think about it and get horny all over again. It had everything he enjoyed confined to about 30 minutes of video.

But first, he had to wait for it to buffer all the way. There was truly nothing in the whole wide world worse than being cock-blocked by a circling series of dots. Nothing at all. There was nothing at all. The darkness wouldn't leave, or stop creeping over his shoulder.

()()()

"Carly," began Spencer as he closed the door behind himself and Sam, "Sam's here to visit, is that okay?"

Carly, as she had made a habit of doing in the last few hours, mumbled something inaudible. But her hand holding up an "A-OK" sort of gesture, indicating that she was fine with it, accompanied her voice. Spencer nodded and let Sam approach the bedside of her ill friend. The older brother, as suspicious as he was, felt the strange need to leave while the two friends talked.

So after the time she spent trying to figure out what to tell Carly, Sam didn't know what to say. Looking at Carly made her feel even sadder than thinking about Freddie. It was then that she wondered to herself if it was even worth coming around them both anymore. iCarly wasn't fun to make anymore, and honestly, it had kind of stopped being fun even before that horrible night.

But what was the point of thinking about that now?

"Carly… have you felt any better since… I guess, a few hours ago?"

"No."

Even though Carly would have liked to lie to Sam, she couldn't help but to be truthful. Lying to Sam felt wrong, especially after she had given her and Freddie flak for keeping their kiss a secret.

"Have you seen a doctor?"

Carly groaned in pain. Every one of her joints ached, making shifting around and trying to get comfortable in her bed a nightmarish affair. "Spencer says if I'm not better by tomorrow, he's taking me to the emergency room."

It was time to cut to the chase.

"Listen, about Freddie. He and I-"

The noise Carly made in response was utterly inhuman. A sort of growling scream that curdled the blood. Ignoring the soreness in her joints, she gripped her head with both hands, desperately seeking relief.

()()()

_Carly had to scrape and flail her arms around for ten minutes before she could feel air instead of garbage. When she escaped, it was pitch black, save for a crack of light a few feet above her. Using nothing more than intuition, she concluded she was inside of a dumpster._

_With no memory of how she got there, she looked for a way to escape. The lid of the thing seemed too far away for her to reach. Why would they make a dumpster so fucking tall? The only thing she could think of was to pile some of the less disgusting garbage up: a makeshift staircase._

_It was collecting the pieces that she saw a baseball bat, or at least the handle of one. Perfect! She could bang on the inside of the dumpster for help. But the plan was dead on arrival when she saw what the other end of the baseball bat was attached to: the head of Ms. Benson._

()()()

He barely suppressed a scream of bliss as the screen took another out of many, many shots to the face. Freddie sat, heaving breaths, performing his usual routine of ignoring the shame his diminished old self brought to his conscience. He had juts gotten his rocks off to rape hentai and was sick and tired of feeling bad about it. It felt good. Why couldn't it just feel good?

There's an old parable, perhaps you heard it once. The last man on Earth was sitting alone in his room. All of a sudden, a knock on the door…

Freddie's gut gripped his throat when the doorknob turned slightly. And turned slightly more. And turned into a staring eye. Squinting couldn't make it go away this time. Squinting couldn't make it turn into something else this time. The eye didn't go away, and Freddie knew if he turned away it would only stare harder.

Everything started to fall out of focus. As if Freddie's room was constantly in the process of being sucked through the floor. He could no longer tell what was really moving or not. His brain forced his unwilling body to do things he couldn't comprehend in his mental state. His hand was gripping something. Swinging it frantically, but only once. And then everything was still, The fur that coated everything was gone as quickly as it materialized. Freddie regained use of his mental faculties long enough to realize something very important. What had just transpired was exactly what he had wanted.

Laughter, screaming laughter, was a soundtrack to every move he made. With his baseball bat, he trashed everything in his room. No direction or sense of purpose. Just mindless action. All-consuming emotion. Rage. Self-loathing. Uncertainty. Hatred. So much hatred. Enough to de-classify everyone around him as a person.

Tripping over one of many fallen pieces of matter in his room, he landed on his mother's bloodied face. It smelled like a time he knew he could never have back. The corpse was still so warm, he fell asleep on it.

To Be Continued


	8. iDream

**Disclaimer: Does It Seem Cold, Like Antifreeze In Mild Evening Rain? I don't own iCarly.**

()()()

_It was early in the afternoon. Sam and Carly wanted to get their rehearsal done, but Freddie was having technical issues. Unfortunately, this didn't afford him sympathy so much as impatience from them._

"_Freddie, what's taking you so long?"_

"_It's this camera, I don't know what's wrong with it!"_

"_Come on, it's the same camera you've had forever! Are you even paying any attention?"_

"_Yeah… you sound distracted. Do you need to talk to-"_

"_No, no, it's fine. Just… homework, lately. Being a senior kind of sucks."_

"_Oh, please. Freddie, you know you're going to get straight As like you do every semester."_

"_Hey, it takes work to keep up those kinds of grades, Sam. Not like you'd know about that."_

"_Very funny, Benson."_

"_Come on, guys! This isn't the time to fight! This is a really special night!"_

"_We know, Carly. You've been ravin' about it all week!"_

"_Because if this night goes good, we can keep doing stuff like this and make the show exciting to do again! We need more viewer interaction, that's what's going to make iCarly big again!"_

"_We get it, we get it… yeesh."_

"_Alright, I think I fixed the camera. Now, how are we going to do this rehearsal? Since it's gonna be kind of unpredictable-"_

"_I think we should just go with it after the intro's over."_

"_You mean… like improvise?"_

"_Yeah, exactly! Like on that Whose Line show! It'll be fun, I promise."_

"_Alright, Carly, do you still need a script or have you memorized the intro?"_

"_We don't need a script, Fredd-o. Just point the camera and shoot."_

"_Okay, in 5, 4, 3, 2…"_

_Had he been actually counting down to one, he still would have only made it as far as two. A freak accident occurred. Unbeknownst to him, it was an accident that would inadvertently save his two friends. The camera in his hands exploded in a shower of fire, lighting the room ablaze and taking Freddie's head with it._

()()()

_8AM, the next day (that is, next after the last chapter, not after the previous skit. Y'know, just for accuracy.)_

Back in the E.R. again, with Carly nearly comatose and his head nearly comatose, sat Spencer Shay. Next to him sat his supporting actor, Sam Puckett. Or maybe _he_ was the supporting actor. Probably. But who cares?

"I would have thought Freddie'd come with us for sure," Spencer said in a near whisper, probably only half aware that he'd said anything. "Are you sure he's okay?"

"I knocked on his door like twice. He didn't answer. I bet he's just asleep or something."

Of course, this was a bald-faced lie from the master to the former student. Sam not only didn't want to ever see Freddie again, she didn't want Carly around him either. However much they may have come to love who he was, that ship sailed and left behind someone too dangerous. She had to laugh to keep from tearing her hair out. Who could've known that spineless fuck had it in him?

It was the expressions on his face at his apartment yesterday that convinced her. She'd seen enough drunk, raging, slobbering arguments between her mother and the flavor-of-the-week from some booze-hole to recognize those anywhere. Recognize it as what, she had no idea, but… she wasn't letting it near Carly.

Sam couldn't bear to look over at Spencer. If anyone outside of the group was an example of the horror this entire episode had brought, he was it. He'd been watching the most important person in his life deteriorate far longer than most other people could stand. To see a person who was normally carefree become distant served to prove that everything had fallen completely to shit.

A doctor, appearing to be not much older than Spencer, walked up to them with an expression of uncertainty. His news was no news.

()()()

Freddie had spent the three hours he'd been awake in a daze, frozen where he lay. The body of his mother had grown cold, but not enough for Freddie to take note. It would begin to smell soon. His time was near.

He wasn't all that afraid. Then again, he didn't feel a lot lately. His blood had all but turned to Novocain. His brain was on dial-up. And it had come to the point where he didn't even notice the state he was in. He was drifting, unaware of anything that wasn't facing him, but painfully aware at all the worst moments. When he looked at someone from the time before his re-programming, it triggered something inside that even scared him sometimes.

There was a little touch of pain in his head. The sort of annoying headache one gets that hurts just enough to ruin a good mood. As he had been lying there, it grew like a pesky weed. Feeding from the agonizing lifelessness plaguing him.

His eyes drifted to a tissue nearby that, like the countless others, was just thrown over his shoulder after use. He'd run out of them about a week ago, so he'd taken to letting his dick spit where it pointed. It was like even his cock hated the shit he forced it to stare at, every hour, on the hour.

The tissue was changing in front of his eyes. It would become blurry, and then sharp. It changed shapes and hues. It split like an amoeba. It would lie there motionless just like the person that used it. His life was like that of a hopeless comatose. It dawned on Freddie that, like that tissue, he had no hope of changing any of it. He was an 18-year-old who just killed his mom. He'd surely get 25 to life.

With that revelation, he got up, feeling like he was stepping out of a car after 12 hours of driving. His legs were so tired, his limbs were scragglier than usual, and faint hints of facial hair were poking out. He hadn't showered since his last outing with Carly two days ago. "I guess I'm finally getting older," was the thought that entered him. Isn't that what he had always wanted? To escape his mom?

But feeling like the world's oldest 18-year-old was not how Freddie Benson intended to spend his last shreds of freedom. His baseball bat lay to the side with several dents and scratches, not from years of use, but yesterday's thrashing. To him, it seemed almost brand new. The dimmest of lights delivered from the most tired of suns punched through the overcast sky. Visibility was granted to the hoard that had accumulated in the young man's room. The hoard had fallen, and so had he.

()()()

_Oh, God, Carly, I'm sorry. I don't know how I could have prevented all this. When you first moved in, I told myself I'd make sure I was the best replacement for Dad you needed._

_I guess I shouldn't have ignored Grandpa when he told me I wasn't good enough to take care of you. That I didn't even have my own life together didn't even occur to me. You didn't need the best I could do, you just needed the best possible. There was no way I could give you that._

_Even right now, I feel useless. Sitting here with Sam, waiting for the doctor to come out and tell us something. She'd been unconscious since early last night, after having some kind of weird head attack. Every time I close my eyes, I can see the blood. It was coming through the nose, ears, eyes and mouth._

_Does it matter how she got that way anymore, if I can't help it? I just want to know what I can do to bring things back to normal._

_I hear footsteps, and I can feel them like they're kicks to the stomach. Every time I hear them, I think the doctor's coming. To tell me that there's nothing we can do._

()()()

_The oppressive rain of Seattle sounds like a scream in the dead of night. It stretches untold distances while careful drivers harmonize their bleating horns. Pitch dark even with the streetlights, and wordlessly violent, 3 AM chimes in the west._

_As the overcast maroon-shaded blackness stares down the concrete face of earth, crying for it, the world goes on churning. The roads are the intestines digesting the gas fumes and tire tracks, fueling a blackened, crispy heart._

_One person stands alone in a forest of marble with fake flowers strangled in their shaky hands. Waiting like a bad actor in a silent film, deliberate like a dueler at high noon, the shadow holds a staring contest with a corpse that it can't see._

_The flowers are placed on the freshly dug dirt. In the rain, they hardly stand a chance, but the shadow wanted to be rid of them as soon as possible. It gazed longingly at nothing. It gazed at its unexposed navel. The pouring rain slowly halted._

()()()

Spencer was taken to the hallway to talk to the doctor one-on-one. If his heart were throbbing any harder, it would be breaking through his ribs. A dread feeling encompassed his stressed, tired being.

"We aren't going to know a whole lot until we do a brain scan, since all of the trauma you've been reporting stems from the head," the doctor explained to Spencer.

"Do you think she's going to be okay?"

"To be honest, young man, I don't know. It's a little early to tell at this point. On the surface, what you describe sounds like typical pneumonia. But… it's this bleeding from the head you talk about that has us thrown off. It may be very serious."

"I didn't come here because I thought it wasn't, doc," said Spencer. "When will you have an idea?"

"We should have her in for a scan this afternoon. If it's any consolation to you, for now her condition is stable. It has been since you brought her here. No further bleeding, all vital signs okay, nothing physically wrong."

"Nothing physically wrong? That's crazy! She's been having nosebleeds for months, never mind the-"

"I know, I know, Mr. Shay! I thought it went without saying. Listen, you seem tired, why don't you go back home and rest? We've got everything taken care of here, and you've been up all night in the waiting room."

"I want to see Carly first, with Sam."

"Certainly."

Spencer nodded as the doctor walked off. He ran his fingers through his hair, which he'd been letting grow out for some time now. While he walked quickly to grab Sam to visit Carly's hospital room, he realized how tired he was of hospitals.

()()()

Sam and Spencer opened the door to her room tentatively, creeping in so as to not disturb the sleeping beauty. The girl slept soundly, and when Spencer saw, he realized why the doctor seemed to suggest not much was wrong. She looked strikingly peaceful. All one would have to do any different is put her back in her bed.

Sam, too, had noticed, and was relieved, although she didn't even know why. Other than, she somewhat expected to walk in and come face to face with Carly as a cancer patient. The thought was horrendous. Carly was supposed to be full of life. Anything else is just wrong.

"Hey, Carly," Spencer said, complete with a little hand wave at his sister, who, needless to say, wasn't looking. Sam held back a laugh and immediately felt bad when Spencer turned to look at her.

"I'm sorry," Sam chuckled, "that just sounded so awkward."

Spencer twisted his mouth a little. "I'm glad someone around here's having a good time."

Her smile faded. "Sorry."

Spencer immediately put his hand on Sam's shoulder and smiled. "Don't be. It made everything seem normal there for a second."

()()()

_She wasn't sure how long she'd been drifting before waking, but the first thing she noticed was the abominable stench. As soon as she put her hand to her nose, she fell under… well, she wasn't sure what it was. It was white, like milk, with a consistency similar to syrup. Obviously, the reeking odor was emanating from this ocean of liquid she woke up in. _

_It must have been baking in the sun for years. She dry-heaved at the thought of it. Even worse- what on earth could be swimming around- or floating dead- beneath her feet? Now she was just torturing herself._

_Luckily, it didn't take long for the girl to spot a land mass, though it was far away. Dreading the entire swim, she traversed the milky ocean and made it to the island shore with startling quickness._

_The first thing she wanted to do was dry all traces of the horrible ocean ooze off of herself. Against her better judgment, she stayed in the heat instead of heading for the shady tree area ahead._

_So she walked along the shoreline to get a good idea of the island's geography. It was reasonably sized, but something was off; nothing stayed the same between each lap around the island. There weren't any familiar landmarks and things just seemed to re-arrange when she turned away. She even swore at one point that a tree disappeared when she blinked. Was there something in the air? She noted that even the things that were obviously real felt like trembles of a pained imagination._

_After another lap, the girl went deeper into the island to find… something, she didn't really know. Food and shelter were obvious things. But something else was pulling her in. That's when the worst of it started._

_It became even more painfully clear that the scenery was constantly changing around her. The only parts that didn't change were those she was looking at. Trees would change height, lose leaves, and even vanish completely, while shadows bent away from their avatars in illogical ways._

"_AAAHHH!"_

_Two hands gripped each of her ankles. She struggled hard against them, to no avail. All the while, she couldn't decide what was worse; the hands, or that she couldn't see them, only feel them. Should she have been happy about that or not?_

_They pulled her, tripping her to the ground and dragging her away from the island, back to the horrid ocean. No one could hear her scream, not even herself._

()()()

I got on the bus holding my head. It was early, I think. Same clothes I wore yesterday. Head hurt, but so did everything else.

Shitty day. Morning ritual here in this mediocre chunk of Seattle. But, I guess the floors of buses aren't nicer anywhere else in the world.

Can't hear myself think. Pick out some words occasionally. Torture and vengeance. Joyless obsession. For the first time, I feel like I don't understand the world around me.

()()()

Sam and Spencer left the hospital into the bitter, icy wind, and searched for a cab to hail. The brief series of steps to the sidewalk felt more like a hike with the freezing air punching their faces.

"S-Say, Sam," Spencer stuttered through chattering teeth, "you should hang out at the apartment until we come back here. I want to catch Freddie so he can come with us to visit Carly and-"

"NO!" Sam shouted. "That creep doesn't deserve to-"

"Sam!" Spencer interrupted. Sam was rendered silent. She had never heard that much force in his voice. It brought back memories of the deal with Freddie yesterday. "I think after three years of being Carly's friend, he deserves a chance to visit while she's sick!"

Despite her instincts telling her to get angry and deliver a verbal smackdown, Sam cooled down. "Freddie… look, Spencer, Freddie's not right anymore. You know that. Remember the last time he was in the hospital?"

Spencer looked as if he was about to say something, but the words got caught in his throat. He had to concede to her point.

"Okay. We won't bring him here with us. But I'm not going to let you run him off if he comes on his own."

"Spencer, goddamn it…" muttered Sam. She didn't bother to press the subject further, but in her mind she swore to keep Freddie away from Carly. By any means necessary. Even if it killed her.

()()()

Freddie stopped understanding it was strange that he couldn't see a female without imagining her covered in sperm or gore. Nor did he understand why that woman just slapped him when he complimented her on having a good blowjob face.

And the wrongness didn't occur to him when her boyfriend tapped him on the shoulder upon leaving the bus. The boyfriend landed a sucker-punch, sending him on a one-way trip to the laughing concrete. He swore he could hear it.

The disconnect between normalcy and craziness was unimportant when he hungrily lapped at the sidewalk blood before stunned onlookers. His blood tasted so fresh. So organic. Warm, with a very light hint of sweetness.

Boyfriend and girl didn't stick around to watch the young stranger just lay there. Just lay there. Just lay there. He was doing a lot of that lately. Not the good kind of laying, either. Where the woman would be chained up and you'd drag a switchblade across her belly. The bad kind of laying, where you start to get scared that you'll not be able to get up.

()()()

"I see you drivin' 'round town with the girl I love, and I'm like-"

Click

"In other news, local authorities-"

Click

"Now back to _Pride and-_"

Click

"Moon Prism Poweeeer-"

Click

Spencer observed behind the couch as Sam laid there, aimlessly surfing through channels. "What's up?"

She shrugged her one shoulder that wasn't pressed against the couch. "Just looking for something to watch. Did you want to sit?"

Sam sat up and made room for Spencer. He sat and continued to watch Sam surf channels at breakneck speed. It was clear she was just passing excess moments rather than actually looking for something to watch. There was a long period of silence, and then they heard a door open and shut across the hall.

"That must've been Freddie," said Spencer in a quiet voice.

Sam turned her head and gave him a very serious look. There was still a loose end that needed tying. "Look, I know Carly's your sister and you're her guardian, but please don't let Freddie near Carly. Just trust me on this."

Spencer stared at his hands, trying to stake out his position. On one hand, he'd heard that Freddie attacked Sam, and that made him really wary. But at the same time, Freddie had been a fixture in his and Carly's lives for years now. He'd never seen Freddie do anything remotely violent, which made him almost believe Sam was exaggerating. After all, she was a renowned liar.

Still, the way she asked and the look in her eyes were both deadly serious. And that fact, combined with Freddie's erratic behavior as of recent, led his final decision. He had to keep his sister safe. She was the most precious thing in his life right now.

"Okay, Sam, you win," Spencer said. "I'm not letting Freddie near Carly. At least until she's out of the hospital, then she can make that decision for herself."

Sam pursed her lips at the last remark, but agreed.

()()()

_She woke up in a room that she quickly recognized as Freddie's kitchen. Blinking to adjust to the naked darkness was all she could do for about a minute. The whole apartment was pitch-black save for a lamp on the counter illuminating only the immediate area. It was so dark in that room, on top of being so strange, that it made everything seem small. Especially herself._

_Freddie was standing at the counter, chopping up something that she couldn't quite see. He brought down his big, rusty butcher knife with aggressive focus, staining it a little bit more with every cut._

_The room had a smell to it, a certain smell that she couldn't place. Roach spray, maybe? It worried her even to breathe the air in the kitchen, because of her asthma. But it was hard to breathe normally in a panic. For, again, she had been strapped by invisible binds of some sort, and she couldn't move most of her body. _

_Not remembering how she'd got there to begin with, she had no real choice but to watch Freddie do… something. A repetitive task at hand, like a living animated gif. It seemed as if he'd stop eventually, but when the room looked right for him to wind down, he persevered._

_She realized that the only noise in the room since waking had been the rhythmic slicing of the butcher knife. At no point before then had it dawned that she should try speaking._

"_Hey, Freddie," mouthed the girl, but all that came out was air. She couldn't hear her own voice._

_So all she did was sit, practically comatose, waiting for ANYTHING other than that merciless rhythm the butcher knife made. Sweat ran down her face, the room's humidity constant, choked by repetitious chopping._

_As if Freddie could hear her thoughts, he began chopping harder and faster. She desperately wanted to put her hands to her ears, or walk away, or make him stop. But there was nothing she could do. She was stuck by an unknown force, and even when the tears began to sting her eyes, nothing changed. Freddie still chopped, her head still ached, and right then and there all she wanted to do was WAKE UP_

()()()

Spencer had his ear to Freddie's apartment door while Sam leaned against the opposite wall, verging on rolling her eyes. This guy was swearing up and down he could hear something coming from Freddie's apartment, but Sam wasn't hearing anything.

"Spence, come on, what the hell are you doing? We should have been gone three minutes ago-"

Sam paused. She heard it. From the way Spencer leaned in closer, one could assume he heard it too.

"What… the hell is he doing?" Sam whispered. Spencer shrugged a shoulder. It wouldn't have mattered much, if not for the fact that the noise repeated so much. Along with the loud hitting noise, the two heard faint sounds they couldn't trace.

The eavesdroppers waited for another two minutes. Then Sam got bored with it and told Spencer she'd go ahead to the hospital. Spencer agreed to meet her there later, and Sam took the elevator in the Shays' apartment.

About a minute later, the door opened, causing Spencer to almost fall on top of Freddie and his trash bag. "Whoa!"

"What are you doing?" Freddie asked. Spencer regained his balance and stalled in answering, unprepared to give an excuse. And then he remembered who he was talking to.

"I, uhh… I haven't seen you in a while, and I just wanted to see what you were up to."

"Um, okay. Why didn't you just knock?"

"I was just about to, but I saw, uh, a penny on the floor. I was picking it up. People always say pennies give you good luck, or finding one does or something. I need some good luck, is what I'm saying."

Freddie knew Spencer was lying, but he didn't care. "Okay. But I'm busy right now. I have a lot of trash I need to take out; it's really been piling up lately. You can come by in a few hours if you want to."

Spencer smiled slightly and nodded. "Okay, sure."

The older man started to walk away, but Freddie wasn't done. "Hey, by the way, how's Carly doing?"

Spencer was put slightly at ease by Freddie's average behavior and mannerisms, but he still remembered what Sam made him promise. It was hard for him to lie to an old friend, but even harder to put his sister into any potential risk. Besides, Freddie wasn't… well. "She's doing okay, but she doesn't want to be bothered. I heard that… you and her got into it a couple of days ago."

"Yeah. I just wanted to let her know I was sorry. Could you tell her that for me?"

"Yeah. Don't worry about it. I'll let her know when she wakes up."

Spencer realized he had let it slip that Carly was… asleep. Much to his relief, Freddie didn't seem suspicious of the fact that Carly was sleeping during the afternoon.

()()()

One hour later, Spencer met Sam in the waiting room of the hospital and they walked to Carly's room. Every step was like a mile and every corner was like an uphill battle. The worst part of making the long trip was the hope that they'd find Carly awake and lively as ever. It was the pain of having that hope dashed with the opening of the door. That was the hardest.

()()()

Carly's eyes burst open like a star going nova, then fluttered. She instantly recognized that she was back in the hospital, and she sure felt shitty enough to be there. Stretching out instantly made her tired again. She was ready to go back to sleep, but her door opened. Spencer and Sam's shocked expressions greeted her. All of a sudden, everything in the room looked somewhat brighter.

"Carly!" They blurted at the same time. Carly didn't have time to respond to them the way she wanted. Hell, she didn't even have time to expect what would happen. Her mouth started moving by itself.

"Don't go back!"

Spencer knelt at Carly's bedside. Sam stood by. "What do you mean? Don't go back where?"

"The apartment! Don't go back! Whatever you do, don't go back!"

()()()

Fredward Benson wasn't going to be kicked around anymore.

All those years of being Carly's friend, being Sam's friend, being Spencer's friend, had vanished from his memory.

You see, watching those videos and throwing his mom out got him to learn a very valuable lesson. People are nothing but exploitable meat. They are objects with flashy functioning brains and organs that only serve to disguise the inanimacy of their selves.

The affection he felt for the people in his life must have been a fluke. It was so fake, he had to repeat it to himself constantly to remind his fancy new brain.

Meanwhile, the rotting juices of his old brain began to pour out of his ear. Yellowed oozing memories soaked through his shirt and made a milky puddle at his feet. They bubbled and made little holes. Divots for his feet. Anxiety hit for a moment. What if the floor were to melt away beneath him? What if he fell? What if he just kept falling?

He left his apartment and walked across to the Shays'; that fucking moron Spencer didn't lock the door, naturally, so he went right in. And waited.

TO BE CONTINUED


	9. iSink

**Disclaimer: You know the drill.**

"Carly?!" Spencer screamed as loud as he could, trying to make himself heard over his sister's own screams. He knelt down next to her. "Carly, calm down! Stop for a second and listen! You had a dream!"

"NO!" Carly shrieked madly. "NO! I WASN'T DREAMING! SPENCER, PLEASE! DON'T GO BACK! DON'T GO BACK!"

"What's going on in here?!" The doctor and three nurses burst in, the commotion being audible from all across the hallway. 

"She just started screaming…" Sam said quietly. It dawned on her in a way it never had before that things were very wrong.

While the doctor and nurses struggled to get Carly under control and considered anesthetics, Sam stood frozen in the doorway. Where did it all go wrong? It seemed like she never really asked herself that- or maybe she did and forgot in the cacophony.

"Sam!" Spencer's yell brought the girl back to reality. "Come over here and help me out! What are you doing?!"

()()()

Freddie grazed two of his fingertips across the steak knife he took from the Shays' kitchen cabinet. They bled a little and he sucked eagerly on his fingers. He liked picturing his fingers slowly losing their color, withering and falling off his hand like old, abandoned strawberries.

He wasn't afraid of being lonely anymore. He convinced himself of that. He'd always hated Sam, ever since the first day they met all the way to the last. He convinced himself of that.

The knife dug a little deeper into the tips of Freddie's fingers, hitting the bone. How could he love a sensation he hated so very much?

He sat at the table and inspected the cuts on his left fingertips. It hurt too much, but he wanted to pull the lips of his wounds apart to look at the sinewy muscle. He wanted to see his pink insides. Freddie Benson wanted to feel what he'd been looking at for all these months.

Sprinkles of blood littered the table. Eventually he gave up on his fingers and licked away at those sprinkles. He was thirsty.

()()()

Sam walked away from the hospital ashamed. It was 7 AM, pitch black in Seattle. Despite her energy, she felt tired.

She didn't want to admit to herself that Spencer was right. _"She needed to hear your voice, why didn't you help me?! Why didn't you talk to her?!" _It was her fault Carly was back out of consciousness. It was her fault her friend's sanity was being questioned.

Just like the way it had been for her whole like, everything was her fault. From her mom's divorce to her friend's mental breakdown.

Sam was supposed to be strong. It didn't make sense, the way she locked up in that room. Spencer saw that too- he wouldn't have been so angry if he were expecting that to happen. Something in her just froze up.

Eventually, the young girl made her way to the apartment building. She couldn't stand the thought of going home right now. She wanted something familiar, something inviting, somewhere she felt safe and wanted.

There was a voice behind the door of Carly's apartment. Sam's hand gripped the doorknob tightly. Just what she needed.

()()()

_Carly woke up unable to breathe. She was floating limply in a room filled with blood. It went all the way to the ceiling, leaving no surface left for Carly to breathe in. She couldn't see exactly where she was- the blood was so thick it distorted her vision. _

_The feeling of drowning intensified in her chest, yet she somehow wasn't losing strength. If anything, she was getting stronger. More frantic. Eager to escape. She flailed and flailed until her hand brushed something solid. A wall? She drifted back over and felt it with both her hands. A wall. _

_She guided herself along until the pain in her chest reached down to her stomach and crippled her. The girl slowly floated to the ground. It was unbearable. She couldn't go on. Her lips parted by themselves. The rancid taste of blood rushed past her teeth. If there were anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up. _

_The frantic adrenaline that was once carrying her had failed. She couldn't move but she was still alive. But then she noticed something else; the blood around her was turning solid. No, not exactly solid- it had become a jelly. The smell was absolutely overpowering- now that she could breathe it was obvious. _

_Carly huddled herself into a little ball, feeling the blood jelly weigh her down. Somehow the bright redness of the jelly was completely obvious, when it should have been pitch black in the room. _

_Carly was staring at what should have been the ceiling when two hands parted through the jelly. It was Freddie! She wept. He vomited blood._

()()()

Sam woke up tied to a chair. Her head hurt, and she could feel a vague moistness on it. She recognized her prison as the studio where iCarly was filmed. It looked brand new. Apparently, Carly hadn't even so much as touched the place since the show stopped filming.

She didn't remember why she was here or what put her here. The last thing she recalled was opening up the door to Carly's apartment. Then the flash of a baseball bat… it was all black after that. It occurred to Sam Puckett that someone caught her off guard, and she went from scared to really pissed. No one- absolutely _no one_- caught Sam off guard and walked away.

The knot tied around her wrists to keep her on the chair was strong. But with some effort she spread her arms out enough to stand up and get them out from around the chair. After getting loose from the chair, she wondered how she was going to escape. The door had to be opened with the handle, so all she could do was turn around and back through.

As she was contemplating this, Freddie entered the room. His shirt had stains of blood on it, and Sam knew right away it was her blood. He was casually knocking on the floor with his baseball bat. Her move.

()()()

"_Dude, did you hear about iCarly coming back tonight?" _

"_Yeah! I read the announcement Freddie posted on the website! I'm totally stoked, that show was like my fucking childhood, dude."_

"_I know! Remember we used to watch that shit all the time, back in middle school!"_

"_Those were the fuckin' days, man! We're so old now, I'm going to feel like the biggest creep ever watching that show."_

"_Shit, dude! That's crazy, everyone loves iCarly!"_

"_Loved, you mean."_

"_Well, I mean, after those last few shows, they probably pissed a lot of their viewers away. Remember that one night where Carly barely said anything?"_

"_Dude, don't fucking remind me. You're going to make me not want to watch the revival."_

"_It was ridiculous! She spent the entire time pacing around in the background while Sam did a viewer Q&A-"_

"_They did like fifty of those before the show shut down!"_

"_I hope they don't fuck this up."_

()()()

In a flash, Sam was on him. Her kick to Freddie's face came before he could swing his bat and he hit the floor. She stomped on his chest and stomach as he writhed and tried to roll away from the furious girl. But Freddie's head was too clear with purpose while Sam's thoughts were soaked in blood and terror.

He grabbed her foot and she fell backwards. A hiss escaped her clenched teeth- the head wound throbbed and stung when it connected with the wood floor. With her arms tied, she couldn't pick herself up before Freddie was standing over her with his bat. "Taste aluminum, cunt."

The camera boy savagely beat Sam without care for where he hit her- as long as it wasn't her head. He had too many plans for her tonight on the brand new episode of iCarly!

Sam's screams were like a siren song to him; the more of them there were, the more he craved them. They were like Lays- he couldn't have just one! She rolled and gasped and screamed- but she didn't plead or beg.

As soon as this thought occurred, Freddie stopped and looked at the assaulted former friend with utter helpless disdain. There was one thing he wanted from her the most- and she would never give it to him. She would never beg him to stop. Because even though she was bruised and broken, with tied hands and hoarse breaths, she was stronger than him. It pissed him off more than anything else in his life had before.

But he had his plans, and he had his dream, and in a matter of hours, he would make her scream. In time.

()()()

"AAHHH!"

Carly woke very quickly from her drug-induced sleep and let a scream so horrid it punched Spencer in the belly. The clumsy man, who passed out from exhaustion in the armchair right by Carly's bed, shrieked and fell down, startled.

"Carly?!"

"Spencer, Sam is in trouble!"

Spencer looked his sister in the eye as best he could while the young girl was in a frantic state. "It was a dream, Carly. Sam is okay."

"No!" Carly said immediately. She struggled against the binds the hospital put across her bed. Spencer wondered briefly whether they were even allowed to do that. "No, she's at the apartment! She went to the apartment- _I told her not to go to the apartment!_"

Before the conversation could press on any further, two nurses came rushing into the room. "What's wrong?!" The younger nurse, about Spencer's age, shouted.

Carly tried her best to put on a calm face. She couldn't become frantic or they'd dose her with tranquilizers again and Spencer wouldn't go help Sam. "I had a terrible dream, but I'm okay."

"Ma'am, we heard you yelling from the other side of the hall," said the older, stern-looking nurse. "I think it'd be in your best interest if you had more sleeping medication."

Spencer got up from the floor. "Now, wait a minute. Don't you think you've given her enough?"

"I'm okay." Carly added. "I can go back to sleep. Just watch." The girl made an obvious attempt at getting the nurses to leave by pretending to fall asleep immediately. It didn't work.

"Alright, look," Spencer said as one of the nurses approached Carly with a needle full of some substance, "I know what you're doing can't possibly be legal. I want to see a doctor right away."

The nurse backed away.

()()()

Freddie looked into his reflection in the Shays' bathroom. His hair was matted to his head. The nerves were getting out of control, making him sweat. It was going to be his first time hosting iCarly! Though the show had been retired for several months, it was still among the most popular shows on the Internet. Freddie had a lot to live up to.

He ran a hand through his hair. It came back slimy with grease so thick it reflected the light above the medicine cabinet. He hadn't taken a shower for about a week. Sam could escape in the time it would take him to bathe, and that wasn't the only thing that stopped him. The bigger part of it was apathy. Yeah, his hair was a grease trap and his face was a minefield of pimples. Who cared anymore?

The episode of iCarly was going to be unique, and a great follow-up to the much-maligned viewer's choice night. He was going to dissect Sam Puckett live on camera, then kill himself. A few tears escaped his eyes. He couldn't wait. He couldn't wait.

()()()

Spencer walked home in the late, dark weather. He didn't know it was the same path Sam walked down to get to her fate.

The streets he found himself on were streets he never thought he'd enter in his life. Ever since the day he was born, he avoided these places out of what was starting to feel like cowardice. His knuckles clacked together and he only barely realized it. The sound should have been obvious to him in the deathly quiet of the night.

He felt like he wanted someone to walk up to him. He wanted to be held at knifepoint- maybe even gunpoint- on a lonesome street where desperation was a lifestyle. There was something in him he didn't want to dump off just anywhere. A bitterness and resentment towards life was bubbling up inside his throat.

Why Carly? Why not him? Why not Sam or Freddie? Why did it have to be his beautiful little sister? He didn't feel any guilt about wishing that it had been anyone instead of her. He loved Sam and Freddie, but it was different.

Spencer dared someone to attack him, deep down inside his gut. It just didn't outwardly show. He walked briskly and kept his eyes mostly averted from trashed homes and the people that were chained to them. Yet he imagined himself lashing out, throwing his hardest right hook. It didn't matter who won. He just wanted to feel something else.

The sad truth of the matter is that he no longer believed his sister would get better. The doctor told him about her physical and psychological issues. Even if she healed from whatever was bothering her physically, the stuff that was hurting her mentally would sideline her. Spencer blamed himself for not being the authority figure he should have been. While his sister was starting her mental breakdown, he was stuck under a giant fork.

()()()

Carly's half-lidded eyes itched. She wanted to scratch them but she couldn't move her arms.

The room hurt. It was a blur of medicated light masquerading its fluorescence as illumination. Focusing on anything was impossible. Faces floated around in front of her, mouthing words. Some of them were human.

She didn't want to close her eyes, because when she did, she saw the mess at the studio. It was a wreck. Beanbag chairs thrown around, props scattered all over the floor, the blood stains- it was unbearable. Carly tried so hard to cling to consciousness.

A TV hung off the wall opposite her bed. It was turned to some local news station she never really watched. The anchor talked in slow motion baritone about a trash bag full of woman found in a garbage truck. Apparently it was so mutilated as to be unidentifiable except through DNA.

It didn't shock Carly when they revealed the body's identity to be that of Marissa Benson. She already knew. But the more the news report wore on, the more her head began to hurt. Her nose was about to start bleeding again. She had to tell the next nurse to turn the TV off.

But really, she knew there was only one way to get rid of it immediately. She went to sleep.

()()()

_She woke up in her and her brother's apartment. It looked clean. Unnaturally pristine. She was drawn to the stairs as if an outside force were pushing her. They took her straight to the third floor, skipping the second entirely._

_The stairs weren't right. They would wind and twist in ways that made little geometric sense within the context of the building. The girl climbing them wasn't completely privy to this- instead she had only a vague feeling of wrongness. Not like she wasn't used to it._

_After several minutes, the girl made her way to the third floor. Behind the door of the iCarly studio entrance, she saw… nothing. It was solid black. That was normal; whoever left the room last was always expected to turn the lights off. What wasn't normal was the hand pushing through the glass, visible despite the darkness inside and outside the room. The girl didn't see it until it was too late. _

_It shattered the door and grabbed her by her hand, she screamed but her voice wouldn't happen. With manic strength, she bashed her hand against the unknown wrist and fled up a staircase that wasn't supposed to be there._

_On the fourth floor, there was another studio door. This one was a polar opposite of the last one- there was blinding, pure white light emanating within. _

_She approached slowly, cautiously. Her curiosity got the best of her and she knocked on the glass. Goatse materialized behind the door, shattered the glass and sucked everything in its path in like a black hole. The girl screamed, but it was inaudible and with nothing in her path to hang onto, she was sucked in. _

_It smelled unbearable, but the sensation of bones being smashed against the tightness of goatse guy's asshole negated it quickly. "Ha ha! I will crush your bones to make my bread!"_

()()()

Spencer walked into the lobby of his apartment building to hear weeping. It was coming from behind the door of Lewbert the doorman's office. The brother of Carly had been looking forward to going up and getting some sleep, yet he was disturbed. He'd never heard anything like it coming from Lewbert before. It wasn't like his usual screechiness; it was low and warbled like a whammy bar was being played on him.

His curiosity and compassion having gotten the best of him, Spencer knocked on the office door. Immediately, the crying stopped. There were some sounds of shuffling, and then Lewbert answered the door. The face of the man shocked Spencer, partly because he was used to it being tightened in scowl or scream. He actually looked vulnerable. Human. For a moment the sight flooded Spencer with guilt for the trouble Carly and her gang sometimes brought him.

"Lewbert, what's up?" Spencer asked. His tone sounded dulled by his own worries, but the words were enough to take Lewbert aback. He expected to have to deal with more nonsense.

"Haven't you heard? Marissa's dead."

()()()

Sam awoke from bat-encouraged unconsciousness strapped haphazardly to a table by rope. She was naked, but the rope covered everything except her head and stomach. This was the room Lewbert rented Freddie. The heater was off.

The footsteps were so quiet, but she could hear them like explosions. Her captor was outside her field of vision. Whatever Freddie was about to do, it was definitely not a spur of the moment sort of thing. That creeped her out immensely. Not only was Freddie about to do something horrible, he'd been planning it for no telling how long!

It took all of her willpower not to do what her instincts screamed at her to do. Sam wanted so badly just to struggle against the ropes, but she knew how unlikely it was she'd get away. She was going to have to do something that was nearly impossible for her even without the frightening situation; think.

"Oh, you're awake," Freddie said beaming. Sam felt like ice cubes fell into her stomach. "Good timing. The show is just about to start."

Freddie cleared his throat. "In 5, 4, 3, 2…"

()()()

After a brief heartfelt with Lewbert, Spencer went back to his apartment for a rest. What he found instead was an obvious break-in. There were things moved around, the table had a knife on it, little chunks of rope littered the living room.

Spencer checked all around the apartment to make sure the culprit wasn't around. The final room he checked was shocking. All over the floor of the studio, blood, more rope, and clothes. Immediately, Spencer recognized the clothes as Sam's, and a chill of horror shook his entire body.

"Shit, shit, shit," Spencer whispered to himself over and over. He felt like he was hyperventilating. He had to call the police. His hands shook so much it was hard to dial the phone. When he got the number dialed, it was hard to even speak, but they understood him. As he put his phone back in his pocket and tried not to faint, he noticed a piece of paper. It was taped next to the studio door.

"_Spencer. My old room. Freddie."_

()()()

_The room had thirteen doors and twelve staircases. She just walked through one of the doors. It couldn't be reopened. _

_It was a sky blue room as massive as a three-story mansion. The staircases were arranged like the M.C. Escher painting- some of them were impossible to use. They sprawled out over each other, winding and careening up and down. _

_She didn't know how she knew this, but one of these doors led to where her friend was being tormented. What she didn't know is where the other eleven led. The not knowing clenched her belly, but didn't stop her from moving forward. One of the staircases was normal, except for a C-shaped curve starting halfway up and ending at the last step._

_Knowing that the easy path would probably lead to disaster, she forged ahead anyway. When she opened the door, it was pitch black on the other side. Hesitantly, she reached into the blackness. It didn't feel any different from the room she was already standing in. But that's because it wasn't._

_When she entered the void and closed the door, the lights flickered on. To her amazement, she was standing right back where she started. As the horror started to sink in, she felt something pelting the top of her head and her shoulders. Instead of looking up, she looked down to see little off-white bits of chalk. _

_The girl clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from vomiting when she realized the room was raining teeth. It didn't become obvious until she saw the blood and chunks of gum on some of them. The room was going to be coated in them. She somehow knew they were Sam's._

__()()()

**I'll never forget the night of the last ever iCarly stream. It was a cold night in Massachusetts- of course- and you couldn't imagine how excited I was. My family was broke and couldn't afford to run the heater for more than a few hours a day, but I didn't even notice how cold it was in my room. I thought iCarly would never go back on air!**

**The stream loaded and I saw Freddie, the cameraman, standing over Sam with a small knife. Sam was tied to a table. She looked really, really scared, but she wasn't struggling or anything. He smiled at the camera and I felt like he was looking right at me. The knife slowly went to Sam's stomach, drifting along teasingly, until he pressed down.**

**I sat in front of computer with my mouth hanging open. My mind wanted to call the cops, shout for someone, do something, anything. But I couldn't move my body. I could hardly even breathe. That night, I watched Sam Puckett get disemboweled.**

()()()

Spencer was far too anxious for stupid riddles at a time like this.

"My old room?" What did that mean? Was he talking about his old room in his and his dead mom's apartment? The last place he lived before moving here?

He had already called the cops before busting through the door of the Bensons' apartment. Someone else on that floor probably heard him, but that didn't matter. There was no telling what was happening to Sam right now, or what had happened.

The Bensons' apartment was absolutely thrashed. It was probably beyond repair, and the smell was overpowering. Not only was it a thick, greasy musk, it wasn't at all recognizable. It was a mishmash of so many things spread on the walls, floors and ceiling that none could pin it. Just a potpourri.

There was one thing in particular that caught Spencer's attention and managed to out-stink the rest of the house. It was a plastic bag sitting atop the counter. He didn't have to open it to realize he was in the middle of a crime scene.

()()()

Freddie could never begin to express how much he loved goatse. It was the thing that kicked open the door of his mind. He'd been living in a fake world with fake friends before then. It's not that the picture understood him- it's that it didn't. Through that, it made him realize he didn't understand himself. He was just plastic before the day they met.

He had it posted all over the walls of his tomb right now. Yes, he considered the room where he was killing Sam his tomb. He knew he was going to die here. Transcending reality to become the Internet was his goal from the very beginning. Freddie was going to be the ultimate creepypasta, the ultimate true-to-life shock image, and the legend. He wanted to be the thing that ended all message board conversations about the most twisted thing on the Internet.

With an intestine pinched off in his hand, he smiled at the camera. He could say something right now- a pithy one liner- but why?

()()()

It was Officer Coulton's first month on the force when he got involved in the Freddie Benson incident. Prior to that point, it had been mostly smooth sailing. He'd never been forced to see a horrific crime scene live in person. Older officers told him those tapes from classes he'd taken could never truly prepare him for a real murder scene. That scared him, but he kept his head high. He was sure that, no matter how brutal it was, he could perform.

They received the call fairly late in the evening. At about 11 PM, a frantic man called claiming he'd found his sister's friend's bloodied clothing in his apartment. They rushed right over and noticed the apartment across the hall had its door busted in. Officer Coulton and three other guys were sent into that place while the other three of their group went into the Shays' place.

Coulton and his guys found a man in his mid 20s fainted away on the kitchen floor. Two of the officers tended to the fainted man while Coulton and another guy searched around the apartment. There was a thick, implacable odor permeating within the place, and the officers secretly worried that a poison was involved.

The room that they later discovered was Freddie Benson's was a horrific pigsty, but Coulton didn't get time to discover its secrets when they heard a scream coming from the kitchen.

When they rushed in, they saw their fellow officers staring open-mouthed at a decomposing human head covered in some kind of milky fluid. It was starting to green, both of its eyes had been taken out, and the jaw was broken and hanging off of the head like an old-fashioned doorknocker.

Officer Coulton fainted. He quit the next day.

()()()

When Spencer's eyes opened, an epiphany shot through them both like a needle. Maybe the quickly realized conclusion was meant to distract him from the trauma he experienced in the Benson apartment. But it didn't matter. In any case, he knew where Freddie was now.

The only problem was he couldn't do much to act on it right now. He'd managed to end up in the back of an ambulance. Well, idn't this just the rest he be needin'? Not right now, unfortunately; a friend of his was probably dead and it was too late for him to help.

An EMT kneeling by his side began to open her mouth. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. "Welcome back, Mr. Shay. You fell and took a serious head injury."

Spencer would have laughed- he wanted to, even- but she wouldn't have understood why. It seemed like everyone was getting head injuries nowadays. Mrs. Benson, his sister- hell, they were making some kind of sick fad out of it. His eyes flicked over to his side where he could faintly see something protruding out of his arm. They were pumping him full of something, alright.

"Ma'am," he slurred, "there's a friend I have who needs help, too."

"Who?"

Spencer could barely string a sentence together, nor could he gesture without Herculean effort. His stomach burned and raged with urgency his mouth couldn't match. This woman had to know what he knew, but getting it across felt impossible. He slurred and drooled himself to sleep.

()()()

With little effort, the police busted down the door to Freddie Benson's torture chamber. Thanks to a tip from doorman Lewbert, they tracked down the boy, but it was too late. Sam Puckett was already dead. He stood at her side with a camera pointed directly at him, calm in the face of what he'd done.

The four officers pointed their guns and one got out their handcuffs. "Hands in the air! You're under arrest!" The smell of blood and shit was so thick it was hard to choke a gag back and sound authoritative.

Freddie ignored the officer's instructions and turned his body to look back at the camera. One of the policemen lunged for him as he lifted his knife, warm and red with Sam's blood, and slammed it hard into his stomach. He was knocked down the split second the knife pierced his liver. He spent his last second sure he'd be immortalized on the Internet.

He didn't know the stream had been cut off by their own server halfway through his murder of Sam Puckett.

()()()

_I floated alone in a black space. When I spoke out loud, I couldn't hear the words. I couldn't even hear myself breathe._

_Not even my own body was visible to me. I could lift my hand up in front of my face, but not see my hand. It was darker in this space than I could ever get used to._

_I wanted to think there was something within the darkness, something that could be illuminated. Even if it were a beast from my most vivid nightmare, I'd know at least I'm not alone. That I'm not the only thing left with any self-awareness, any consciousness. _

_But the only thing to all sides of me was emptiness. Was I blind? Maybe I was, but that didn't explain why I couldn't feel or hear or even smell or taste. It was like all my senses were just shut down. _

_I remember reading about the heat death of the universe back in freshman science class. Is that what this was right now? Am I somehow alive while everything else isn't?_

()()()

TO BE CONTINUED


	10. iSleep

**Disclaimer: Eh, whatever.**

_Two years later…_

"Ms. Shay…!" A government teacher called out in the middle of class. "Ms. Shay!"

Her teacher's words rudely jostled her awake. The girl's head practically flew off the desk and small chuckles littered the classroom. Everyone else who knew better felt some derision for the people laughing.

"Ms. Shay, are you alright?" The teacher asked. "Do you need to-"

"I'm fine," she said quickly. "I'm fine. I'm sorry."

"Okay, then… if you're sure."

Carly looked back down at her notes and saw the last few things she scrawled. They were completely useless scribbles. She had to fight the urge to groan in anger.

"Actually, ma'am, I changed my mind." Carly said right in the middle of the teacher's lecture. "I really need to go."

"Okay. Remember the online quiz due on Friday."

Carly nodded even though she barely heard her say anything. She left in haste.

The whole way back to her apartment, she felt her stomach buckle. It looked like she was going to make it another whole week in a row without falling asleep in class. She felt embarrassed and ashamed, not to mention disappointed.

But that's the way it was. She couldn't fall asleep unless she was either completely exhausted or in a room full of activity. If she was alone in a dark room, she had almost no chance of going to sleep. The voices would start. The thoughts would start. The flashbacks would start. No amount of her meds could fix that.

The song "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead was playing at a soft volume in her car. It was one of the songs on her relaxation tape. The lights of Seattle never looked so lonely and defeated.

()()()

Spencer's last sculpture- a giant fork made of smaller forks- sat in a corner where the brother couldn't see it.

He sat motionless in front of the TV, for good reason. Any significant amount of physical activity was no longer possible for him. The damage to his brain from his fall two years ago made certain of that.

Walking was a challenge, but talking was almost as bad. He dreaded when his sister came home. She was going to want to talk, and he was going to want to open his mouth as little as possible. That is, unless he wanted a torrent of drool to come pouring out with every sentence.

Everyone thought it was just so fucking funny when he got disabled. They all mocked and gossiped about his slurred speech and his gimp walk. He wouldn't wish this on anybody, even his worst enemy. At least, that's what he tried to tell himself when he found he was doing just that.

Inwardly he groaned when he heard the crack of the apartment door. His sister was home. The sound of her backpack collapsing off her shoulders accompanied the door's shutting. Clop clop clop. Her shoes led her over to the refrigerator. Seems it was eatin' time!

()()()

Spencer was always cranky. It was understandable. But understanding it doesn't make it any more tolerable.

"Have you eaten, Spencer?" Carly asked. Her brother often didn't eat, and as a result, he was often more delusional than he should have been. He grunted off some sort of androgynous response and the girl prepared something anyway. Maybe he wouldn't want it- maybe he'd bitch her out for wasting food- but she wouldn't let him starve.

She wished her brother would get rid of that goddamn sculpture. The giant fork. It was one of the things in the apartment that served simply to remind her of worse times. For how much she hated to see it, her brother must be going crazy from it. It's a reminder for him that he's never going to be able to sculpt again! Carly couldn't believe, with Spencer's strict regiment of anti-depressants, he wanted to keep around something that was depressing him.

But maybe it wasn't depressing him. Maybe it was just depressing her.

Carly left Spencer's food on the coffee table in front of him and, thank goodness, he was hungry. She bid him good night and went up to her room. If there's one thing the girl was grateful for, it was the vibrancy her room had from the time Spencer redecorated it. She thought it simply gorgeous.

()()()

Finally, she went upstairs. All that talking was about to kill his ears.

A plate of food sat in front of him that he felt obligated to eat because Carly made it. He wasn't really hungry, but like hell he was letting food go to waste. Carly did ask if he wanted some food, and he'd have answered negative if he felt that much like talking. Nowadays, it didn't pay much to try.

Sometimes his bitterness surprised him. That was good- it meant some idealistic part of his old self still explored somewhere deep in his mind. He didn't feel like helping it along, but he wished it the best.

Another few hours and it would be time for his sister to try getting some sleep. Sleep. He took it for granted when it was simple. She did too, and he could tell. Every night was a little hell.

()()()

Carly hit the bed and then she hit it with her fist. This was her least favorite time of the day- the end of it.

The meds never worked, much like every med she'd tried since…

But whatever. She grabbed her laptop and went to a place that provided some relief- a small chat room. The place was in a very quiet little corner of the Internet and there were few regulars. As a result, it had a sense of community and chillness. The few other people who frequented it were her only friends. She hated to admit that.

They didn't know that she was the former co-star of iCarly. If they knew, they would have immediately started asking about the very last iCarly webcast. That was so fresh and legendary in the minds of people, she was never telling them who she really was.

Some nights they even started talking about it. Those were the nights she had to excuse herself and proceed to get absolutely no sleep. It was so hard to forget about it and live her life. She spent the first year after it in an almost comatose state. Her life was changed forever, for the worse.

()()()

The brother Spencer took up his walker and walked. It was damn lucky for him that his bedroom was on the first floor.

His room was a wreck and that's exactly how he liked it! The floor was a menagerie of random bullshit. There were socks, dirty pictures, dust in the corners, old clothes, and all the other accouterments he wanted and needed.

He turned on the television sitting by his bed and laid down before realizing he'd left the living room's on. And it was fucking blaring. Now it was time for him to make a very tough decision. He could get out of his bed, grab the walker again, go back and turn it off. Or the much more attractive option; wait until his sister came down for a glass of water so she'd do it.

The notion of calling her to do it entered his mind for a brief moment and exited just as fast. His voice would surely sound awful on the phone. Besides, his pants were lying on the floor, and that's where his phone was. Like hell he'd bend over.

It then occurred to him a very dark thing; how much like a towel he'd become. Stationary, sedentary, a man without purpose, collecting disability, wasting away. He could swear he had the exact same revelation every single night, though.

But before he could finish the decision he wanted to make, Spencer fell asleep. With him it was easy, and that was something his sister truly envied about him. Occasionally she even wished she could be brain damaged just so she could get some sleep. But then she thought about the "drooling while talking" aspect of it and her mind quickly changed.

()()()

_Carly swam to the roof of her apartment building and waited. For what, she didn't remember. But she felt like something was approaching very soon and she needed to be on standby for it. Things floated by that reminded her there used to be a city underneath the pockmarked ocean. Besides those objects and the occasional rooftop, nothing of Seattle was visible. _

_It was the brightest part of the day and only the faintest hint of sunlight broke the bed of clouds. Right above Carly's head, it was a rather pretty sight. But one could immediately offset that by observing the grayness of the rest of the sky. Or the water, for that matter, since it seemed to be nothing more than gray as well. _

_The rain hadn't stopped for what felt like months, even though Carly secretly knew this was all a dream. It came down so hard no one could see but for a few feet in front of their selves. But even through the rain, Carly could see something approaching on a piece of wood. Right away, it was obviously not a person. It looked like some kind of black pile. _

_Just after realizing what it was, the pile of thick wires came to life and ensnared the girl from so far away she could never have expected it. She was quickly taken underwater, where she could see very clearly._

_The wires were coming- rather, spilling- out of a window. Something foreboding about that window- but she was in a dream, so she knew immediately what it was- that was Freddie Benson's room! The water rendered her scream inaudible._

()()()

From the outside, Carly's sleep was quite restless. Her face couldn't stop clenching and her mouth whispered words that didn't seem to relate to each other. But her body remained still.

She visited the sleep clinic for a few months after the Benson Incident. They found little wrong with her sleeping patterns. It was all in her mind, they said. She was susceptible to severe nightmares for the things she'd been put through.

The nightmares weren't just frightening; they were strange and inconsistent. She never had the exact same one twice. With this, it was very difficult to explain them to a therapist, because she would only ever experience it once.

All the sleeping meds did for her was put her to sleep faster- they didn't do anything for the bad dreams. Carly took them for the first week and immediately quit them- because, in all honesty, she didn't want to sleep. She didn't understand why the so-called "doctors" wanted her to sleep so badly- and it was never enough, anyway. When she awoke every morning, she was tired. Her heart had become a seizure.

()()()

_iCarly Cohost Commits Live Massacre_

_May 1__st__, 2011_

_Fredward Benson, iCarly's 17-year-old technical producer, murdered co-star Sam Puckett and committed suicide on a live webcast April 30__th__._

_By the time police found where the killer was streaming from, the victim had already died. Police officials noted the brutality of the slaying._

"_I'm afraid much of what we found at the scene, you couldn't transcribe it in the paper," said Sgt. Peter Ross. "It was very messy and very awful."_

_Aside from the killing of 17-year-old Sam Puckett, DNA evidence has tied Fredward to the murder of Marissa Benson, his mother. Marissa's dismembered body was found in a garbage truck the afternoon before Sam Puckett's murder._

_Tenants of the Bensons' apartment complex were shocked and some were disbelieving about the identity of the killer. Fredward- or "Freddie" as he was mostly called- was known for being a polite and intelligent young man._

"_It doesn't seem right to me that young man is being accused," said Patsy Ortega, a neighbor of the Bensons'. "I never would've thought he had that in him."_

"_I can't picture Freddie cutting an onion, never mind his friend," said Lars Tennyson, another neighbor. "It's awful. But the camera doesn't lie, I guess."_

_The feed of Freddie torturing his co-host remained on air for 15 minutes before the website's admins were alerted. Many who tuned in to the popular webcast were deeply disturbed at what they saw._

"_My son hasn't come out of his room since last night," a tearful Seattle mother said. "He's only 10 years old. He loved that show so much. I can't believe this."_

_Carly Shay, iCarly's other co-star, could not be reached for comment._

()()()

Carly's rest for that night was coming in sporadic gasps. Rather than a simple eight-hour stretch, she obtained about fifteen minutes at a time. Then, she'd awaken for about a minute, and then resume. It just went on and on and on like that.

Come to think of it, the girl's whole life was starting to revolve around the bed she now lay in. Going out for anything other than a class was a rarity. Communicating with any real people- save for Spencer and some doctors- was even less common.

"_Maybe I should go to the Groovy Smoothie this weekend," _she thought. Honestly, Carly didn't even know that the place was still open- she hadn't been there since before…

But whatever. In any case, Carly felt like it was time for her to start getting out more. She couldn't live under the shadow of two gravestones forever. Eventually, they'd crush her. Some hints of tenacity started welling up in Carly's chest. _"I can do it," _she mouthed to the ceiling. _"I can start living a normal life again." _The idea was enough to bring a tear to Carly's eye.

Hold on. This isn't the first time Carly Shay vowed to start her life over. In fact, much like everything else in her life, it had turned into a ritual. Regularly, the former iCarly star promised herself many wonderful things. She would drop the past that hung around her neck when she got out of bed in the morning. The world would start looking colorful again. When she saw the door to the Bensons' former apartment, she wouldn't cringe inwardly. The sight of ham in a grocery store would not send her into another fit of tears. She promised herself all these wonderful things.

But with every chance to set herself on fire, she just ended up doing the same thing.

At last, the exhausted Carly faded into her bed of nightmares.

()()()

_Carly woke up in her house. It was 6 AM and she was elated not to have had any bad dreams. So happy, incidentally, she tripped over a hand trying to grab her ankle as she raced downstairs to wake Spencer._

_He wasn't in his room, so Carly figured him out for groceries. Though it was 6 in the morning, maybe he had a reason to be excited as well. But when Carly saw the mess Spencer left in the kitchen, she just shook her head in frustration._

_Would you believe that man left severed feet all over the kitchen? What an inconsiderate jerk! Carly made a mental note to take away Spencer's pedometer at the nearest opportunity._

_Fortunately, the delightful screaming and crying of the garbage disposal brightened the young girl's mood once again! Carly jammed gooey, decomposing feet down its mouth one by one while tears dripped from its faucet. Sometimes, it got backed up and the thing would vomit maggoty chunks of flesh and bone right in Carly's face! Talk about making it hard to whistle while you work! But with some elbow grease, the teen got the job done!_

_Carly turned on the TV. It was Faces of Death, and right then and there she started moving alongside the main character, R. Budd Dwyer. Funny thing is, Budd's skit in the movie was repeating over and over. He kept placing the gun in his mouth and shooting over and over. It was like he was trying really hard to kill himself, but his eternal celluloid prison kept him alive against his will! How funny!_

_At last, Spencer arrived through the glass door by the kitchen. He had become a centaur! Oh, wait, not quite. He had a couple of big old thick legs grown out of his ass! Hold on, was that it? Well, whatever it was, they walked him back into the apartment._

"_Hey, Carly," he said in mid-yawn. "I picked up some fried offal at the Catholic Church Cookoff."_

_Carly couldn't believe it. Spencer knew she was allergic to any food made by Catholics! "Spencer, you-"_

_Without any warning, Spencer Shay melted into a pile of foul smelling goo and Carly screamed. And Carly screamed. And Carly screamed yet more._

_Picking up the nearest blunt object, Carly destroyed a pane of glass on the door and ended her life._

()()()

It was morning. Carly could see that through her window. But she didn't know exactly what time it was. She'd been frozen in her bed since she awoke from her last dream. If she moved, she felt as if her body would sink through the bed sheets and she would disappear.

Meanwhile, her brother was making his steady approach to the toilet. He tended to be awoken by his bowel movements. Being on the verge of shitting his pants was the only thing enough to propel the man out of bed. Thankfully, the medicine he took ensured that he had diarrhea unless he ate just right, which he never did.

The view of the wall in front of the toilet was practically imprinted in his brain. He could see it when he closed his eyes. And then he remembered the special occasion for today. He finished his toilet business and pulled his phone out to call Carly.

"Sis, get dressed and let's go to the cemetery. We're visiting them."

()()()

Carly put down her cell phone and sat up in bed. Her body felt like undercooked pasta and her stomach seemed to want to drip out of her waist. How could she have forgotten today was the two year anniversary of Sam and Freddie's deaths? This was going to be the most dreadful part of her year- and she had multiple moments to pick from.

Not wanting Spencer to walk up and remind her, she grabbed some fresh clothes and ran downstairs for her shower. Taking her time in the shower was a hard habit to break, but she did it. Of course, not before her and her brother got into some pretty serious arguments about it. Now she could be in and out in about 10 minutes.

Ironically, Spencer was the one who really took his time, so he tended to go second. By the time he was done, Carly would sometimes be asleep on the couch whenever he got out. This pissed him off- what if he fell down or something and she couldn't hear him scream for help? He swore that one day she'd end up finishing the job for Freddie.

()()()

**Dear Sergeant Kerry,**

**This is my letter of resignation from the force. I'm sorry to say that there are some problems I need to have worked out before I can call myself fit to be anything, much less an officer of the law.**

**The truth is, the Freddie Benson incident, as they're calling it on CNN already, did something to me. It changed who I am, and that terrifies me. I am unsure why this is, I've seen worse, not in person. But while my body has left the apartment where we found the severed head of Marissa Benson, my mind hasn't. I still smell the apartment when I take a deep breath through my nose. It had a taste, sir, the air in that apartment, that I don't want to linger on, because I don't want to know from where among the many horrible things in that apartment it came. **

**I apologize for giving you so much to read. It's taken me a long time sitting at my desk for me to gather everything I wanted to write down. But after doing it, I feel like some of the pain has gone. My wife is in bed asking me why I'm up so late. I love her more than I ever imagined right now.**

**-Officer Frank Coulton**

()()()

Carly and Spencer walked to the cemetery three blocks away, holding hands so Spencer could keep his balance. Of course, having the emotional support didn't hurt Carly's end of the bargain either. There was a dense fog diminishing the view of Seattle past a few feet. The air seemed to have hands, and those hands caressed with the vigor of a subway vagrant with bad intent. Spencer's joints were screaming in pain. Two nearly unbroken years of sedentary living made them weak.

Both of them were secretly contemplating the cliché weather on such a day. Seattle was a rainy city, but today was particularly gloomy because the air appeared to be haunted by the dead. But then, what if it were a beautiful and sunny blue sky? What if they were a few hours away, in effervescent, blinding California? The weather wouldn't relate to them- it would outright laugh at them. Their ears would be pockmarked by the laughter of near-summer children as they gave Sam Puckett flowers.

Carly's fingers twitched. Spencer felt like he needed to say something to his sister to comfort her. This was one of the few days where he felt sorry for someone other than himself. Sure, he missed Sam and the Bensons too, but for her it was different. It was like her soul died with them both.

()()()

"_Go away!" Spencer slurred from the door, but his voice wasn't audible through the din of reporter voices. He and his sister just returned from the hospital, and they didn't feel like being grilled about the "Benson Incident."_

"_Mr. Shay, how is your sister?!"_

"_What was Fredward like prior to the Benson Incident?!"_

"_Do you need a napkin for your mouth?!"_

"_I said leave!" Spencer strained to get the words out loud enough for the reporters to hear, but it didn't work. _

_Meanwhile, Carly laid on the couch in the living room with a severe headache. Her head had been throbbing ever since the night Sam died. The painkillers prescribed to her did nothing for it, but at least they made her feel a little pleasant otherwise. It was actually very easy for her to tune the reporters out, to her relief. _

"_Are you going to attend the funeral of Sam Puckett?!"_

"_What does this mean for iCarly's future?!"_

"_Sir, you have a little something on your lip there!"_

_Fed up and angry, Spencer slapped a camera out of the closest brown-noser's hands. "Hey! My camera!" she squeaked in a mousy voice. She was actually very cute, Spencer thought, but tears welled up in his eyes when he remembered his condition. There's no way she'd go out with him the way he was now._

"_Can my sister and I please get just one fucking moment of peace?" Spencer mumbled to the photographer. It was clear from her expression that she didn't understand a word he said, and that only frustrated him further. He slammed the door right into the journalists' faces, losing his balance and falling over as a result. _

_Spencer wriggled around on the floor trying to pick himself back up, and his grunts of irritation morphed into sobs of anguish. His loud wailing stirred up a reaction in Carly herself, and she harmonized with him. They cried for Sam. They cried for the Bensons. They pitied themselves. _

()()() 

"Spencer, do you want to buy some flowers?"

He shook his head. "Too late, now."

"Are you sure? I don't feel right about not giving them flowers."

Spencer sighed and pulled out his wallet. Carly shook her head. "No, no, I have the money to pay for them. Do you want to go ahead to the cemetery while I go buy flowers?"

"Sure," he said shrugging as a gargantuan string of saliva escaped down his chin. This is exactly what Spencer hated about talking.

"Are you? Don't you think you need to come with me, in case you fall over?"

Spencer shook his head.

"Okay. Well, I'll be right back." Carly rushed off toward a flower shop located a mile away from the cemetery. But as she opened the gulf between herself and her brother, she began to feel more hesitant. A feeling of worry and loneliness seeped into her belly and it wasn't long before she stopped. She looked back to see that Spencer was nearly out of view.

Carly ran back to Spencer's side. Spencer looked at Carly, somewhat confused.

"I decided we didn't need them that badly," Carly mumbled, then grabbed Spencer's hand. The brother got it right away; she just didn't want to be alone.

()()()

_1. And I saw, as it were, a rift open in the sky_

_2. And voices beckoning, saying, "come forth to die"_

_3. One girl stood still on a bike built for three  
4. While the other two rose to a word like the sea_

_5. "Come," and the fair-haired woman fell apart  
6. "Come," and the brown-haired gentleman's heart  
7. Became afflicted with a bleeding curse of sores  
8. Falling neck deep into a chasm of whores_

_9. His hand, wrapped tight around the ankle of his friend  
10. Now lay on the shoulder of the beast whose name was "sin"_

_11. "Salud," and the creature's eyes turned into screens  
12. Amplify a chorus of the two young girls' screams  
13. And I saw, as it were, a rift close in the sky_

_14. Sewing itself up so the young girl that died  
15. Didn't have to see the final fate of the young man  
16. "He will never be bothering you again."_

()()()

_Sam Puckett_

_February 1st, 1992 – April 30__th__, 2010_

The strangest thing occurred to Carly while she stared at Sam's birthdate- why didn't her and Spencer celebrate that? It's probably exactly what Sam would have wanted anyway. But she did like how her mom was kind enough to have her buried with her preferred name instead of "Samantha."

Right next to her, Spencer was focused intently on the grave of Freddie Benson. One wondered if he thought Freddie would pop out and attack if he took his eyes away for a second.

For the second year in a row, Spencer didn't know what to say to the headstone Marjssa and Freddie shared. What was he supposed to say to either of them? Apologize to Marissa for not sufficiently being able to predict her son's burgeoning mental illness? Curse Freddie and hope that whatever hell he's burning in will scorch him in a way he never before felt?

Carly looked over at the older Shay sibling, surprised. She was starting to feel like this was the first time her brother was more affected than she was. He was standing there with a stone-faced expression, but the tears streaming freely down his face gave him away. This was the first time he cried during a cemetery visit- but then again, this was only their second one.

Poor Sam and Freddie…

()()()

"_What's Sam doing?!" Carly whined with phone clenched in her hand. "She was supposed to be here five minutes ago."_

"_I don't know why you're so surprised she's late," Freddie replied. "This isn't even the first time she's been late this month."_

"_But she won't even respond to my calls, it just goes straight to voicemail," said Carly. She slumped into one of the beanbag chairs and picked up her notebook. "I had a really good idea for a special show I wanted to share with her, too."_

"_Special? You just had the anniversary show last month, what's next? Someone having a birthday?"_

_Carly shook her head. "No, it's a viewer participation night. We could communicate with the audience, ask them what they like and don't like about the show, let them suggest some stuff. I think it'd be really fun!"_

"_It does sound fun," Freddie said, "but what about all the guys that are going to show up just to be jerks?"_

"_You can do something about that," Carly said dismissively, making Freddie huff a little inside. He hated it when Carly and Sam acted so blasé about his role in the show._

_Finally, Sam walked through the door, sweating like mad. "I'm here, I'm here," she said._

"_About time. What happened?" Carly asked, arms crossed._

"_Mom let the phone bill go too long, so I never got any calls or messages…" Sam said through raggedy breaths. "So what did I miss?"_

"_Well, Carly wants to do a viewer's choice night."_

()()()

Carly and Spencer sat together at a concrete bench, arms around each other's shoulders. They were the only people at the cemetery, which they were both grateful for.

"Spencer," Carly at last spoke up, after 20 long minutes, "when am I going to stop thinking about them."

"Hopefully, you won't," he responded much quicker than she was expecting, "at least, not completely. What you need to do is stop grieving over them."

"That's so hard, Spencer," Carly said through a cracking voice. "Even when I try to think about something else, I still feel… just like how I felt when you told me what happened."

"I know all about that feeling," said Spencer, pausing to wipe a strand of drool from his chin. "It's the same one I had when I learned I could never walk the same again. But Carly, let me tell you, this pain you feel will hold you hostage the rest of your life unless you deal with it somehow. Sam wouldn't have wanted to see you spending two years grieving about her. She'd want you to start moving on from it."

()()()

**I am the troll that sent the people on iCarly a link to goatse. It was a quick thing I did, and when I heard the news about "The Benson Incident," I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. After all, how could sending someone a link to goatse cause him or her to become a deranged psychopath?**

**After that, I graduated high school and got to go to a great college. I majored in Computer Science and got a nice apartment. What kinda sucked is my parents didn't want me to major in computer science, they wanted me to do engineering. Probably just some of that Oklahoma mentality- whatever you do, it's gotta be not queer. Well, I didn't want to be some shit farmer like my dad; I wanted to be a respectable man. Of course, I didn't want to tell him that. He was really a nice man. He was very compassionate, but he didn't always express that in a way you would expect.**

**So that's my story. I'm just a normal kid who got into some trolling when I was in school. Thankfully, I'll never know what my actions unfurled into.**

()()()

"_Ma'am!" _

_Who… was that?_

"_Excuse me, ma'am! Can you hear me?"_

_I opened my eyes and saw another pair gaze right into them from two feet away. Even though this place- wherever it was- was too dark to make a face out, I saw eyes. _

_But then the person shined their flashlight in my face and I had to clench my eyes shut to avoid being blinded. It was my father! But I knew that couldn't be right- he had a different voice! _

"_Come on, grab my hand," the stranger said. "I'll pull you out!"_

_I couldn't see his hand. The flashlight was too harsh and I didn't know this man very well. Or did I? It was impossible to tell, so I reached my hand out. When he grabbed it, I felt him suck something out of my stomach. It went out of my stomach, through my arm and into him. He used the last of his strength to pull me out and then I watched him wither and die on the ground. Then I looked up and…_

()()()

Carly's eyes snapped open and she had to squint them immediately; the sun was out and as bright as she'd ever seen it. Apparently, the fog had dissipated. She couldn't believe how she'd fallen asleep outside, so embarrassing! Spencer sat next to her, trying to keep still- a task that was not difficult.

"Spencer," Carly said in a croaking sort of voice, "how long have I been asleep?"

"Oh, about an hour," he said.

Carly's eyes shot wide open and she turned her head. "That long?! Why didn't you wake me up?!"

"You don't get a lot of sleep at night. Thought you might want to rest a little."

That was true, the 20-year-old had to concede. She got up- no, she practically leapt- from the stone bench and looked up at the sky. In all the years she lived in Seattle, there had never been a more beautiful shade of blue up there.

"Have you been awake this entire time, Spence?"

Spencer nodded.

"What was it like watching the fog fade away?"

The question caught her older brother off guard. All he could really respond with was an indifferent shrug. He barely even noticed the shift, as abrupt as it must have been.

Carly started thinking about one of the songs on her mixtape, "Mr. Blue Sky." The same line kept playing in her head: "Mr, Blue Sky, please tell us why you had to hide away for so long." It felt to her like the clouds were a constant influence in Seattle, which was perhaps not the fairest assessment.

Carly and Spencer walked back home together. Tomorrow would probably be dank again, so they both tried to absorb as much of the weather as they could. Tomorrow was probably going to be more misery for the both of them, but that was fine. The Shay siblings were resigned to that, because being alive in misery is still better than being dead. A razor would still remind Carly of a picture on the offended page. Seeing other people would still remind Spencer that he couldn't walk right. In spite of all that, it was getting a little better every day.

They still couldn't believe this whole thing started with a picture of goatse, though.

**THE END**


End file.
